Speaker 1: Guess what, mango? What's that? Will? All right? So I
Speaker 1: was reading this story from a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and it was about this three year old boy whose
Speaker 1: dog Mo had passed away. So to help the boy
Speaker 1: cope with most passing, the boy's mom would get him
Speaker 1: to write these letters to MO, and then they addressed
Speaker 1: them to Mo Westbrook, Doggie Heaven Cloud one. And each
Speaker 1: time they put the letter in the mailbox, she'd sneak
Speaker 1: back out and remove the letter. And one day she
Speaker 1: forgets to do this, and she just assumed the postal
Speaker 1: worker would get it and throw it away. But a
Speaker 1: few weeks later they go out to the mailbox and
Speaker 1: there was a letter with the return address on it
Speaker 1: from MO. And the letter read, I'm in Doggie Heaven,
Speaker 1: I play all day, I'm happy, thank you for being
Speaker 1: my friend. I love you, Luke. That's pretty screat Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and here's the thing. So anywhere I've lived, the
Speaker 1: mail carrier has been one of the nicest people in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. I mean, we chat with ours any time
Speaker 1: we see him. And they're not only so many more
Speaker 1: good stories about heartwarming moments like this, but they're just
Speaker 1: so many fascinating stories in the history of the US
Speaker 1: Postal Service. So that's what we're diving into today. Yea,
Speaker 1: hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend Mangesh Ticketer and on the other side of the
Speaker 1: soundproof glass the man who always delivers, Tristan McNeil. And
Speaker 1: on today's show, we're shining the spotlight on one of
Speaker 1: the great unsung heroes of our society, and that's the
Speaker 1: US Postal Service. Of course, everybody is aware of the USPS,
Speaker 1: but many of us tend to take its services for granted,
Speaker 1: and you know, not really think about the ridiculous amount
Speaker 1: of planning and work that goes into processing and delivering
Speaker 1: more than half a billion pieces of mail a day.
Speaker 1: In fact, the only time we devote much thought to
Speaker 1: the postal Service at all this when we need something
Speaker 1: from it, when something's gone wrong, and we want to
Speaker 1: blow off steam by griping about it. So today we're
Speaker 1: trying to break that bad habit by sharing some of
Speaker 1: the most interesting pieces of postal history, as well as
Speaker 1: some of the craziest stories to ever make it out
Speaker 1: of the mailbag, definitely, and to make sure we don't
Speaker 1: miss any of the good stuff, we'll be talking to
Speaker 1: the keeper of postal history or itself, Nancy Pope. Nancy
Speaker 1: Post the top historian at the National Postal Museum. So
Speaker 1: we'll talk to her about what it takes to be
Speaker 1: a postal historian and find out what she considers to
Speaker 1: be the most interesting pieces of postal office history. All right,
Speaker 1: So I want to start with one of the things
Speaker 1: that really stood out to me while doing our research,
Speaker 1: and that's the immense scope of the Postal Services operations.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about the largest retail network in
Speaker 1: the nation. So there were thirty one thousand active US
Speaker 1: post offices and just to put that in perspective, that's
Speaker 1: that's more than all the domestic McDonald's, Starbucks and Walmart's combined.
Speaker 1: And to staff all those locations and handle the deliveries
Speaker 1: between them, the Postal Service employees over half a million
Speaker 1: people and maintains a lead of two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: seven thousand vehicles. That's one of the largest civilian fleets
Speaker 1: in the world. The US Postal Service is a gargantuan
Speaker 1: NonStop delivery machine. Yeah, and the scope of what all
Speaker 1: that manpower and tech can achieve is equally impressive. So
Speaker 1: the USPS is actually responsible for the delivery of nearly
Speaker 1: half the mail volume in the entire world. That's but
Speaker 1: I think the most amazing thing about the whole crazy
Speaker 1: operation is that for almost fifty years now, it's cost
Speaker 1: taxpayers virtually nothing. There on a whole lot of government
Speaker 1: departments or agencies you can say that about it is impressive.
Speaker 1: But I notice you said costs virtually nothing for taxpayers.
Speaker 1: And I always wondered whether like things like the postage
Speaker 1: sales and products and all their special services like express mail,
Speaker 1: you know, covered those costs. So are you saying it
Speaker 1: actually does receive some government funding though? Well, you're definitely
Speaker 1: right that stamp sales and stuff like that pays for
Speaker 1: the agency's operating costs, but they do receive less than
Speaker 1: one percent of their budget from the govern mint. According
Speaker 1: to PolitiFact, Congress gives the Postal Service a hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars a year to compensate the agency for providing freemailing
Speaker 1: privileges to blind people and overseas voters. Okay, well, that
Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting, and it's actually a pretty good return
Speaker 1: on on what I would say overall as a small
Speaker 1: investment from each taxpayer. And and honestly that that's always
Speaker 1: been the case with mail delivery in America, even before
Speaker 1: the US became a country, before became country. So how
Speaker 1: is that? Well, during the Second Continental Congress in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy five, this is a year before the colonies would
Speaker 1: declare their independence from England, the delegates established this postal
Speaker 1: system and and appointed Ben Franklin as the first Postmaster General.
Speaker 1: And the great thing about that is that Franklin's appointment
Speaker 1: was this act of rebellion in itself. Like he previously
Speaker 1: served as the postmaster General and the colonies for the
Speaker 1: British Royal Mail system, but he'd been dismissed because of
Speaker 1: his involvement in the Revolution. So he was actually appointed
Speaker 1: as the first postmaster General twice. It's a good thing
Speaker 1: we rehired and from our side, because you know, Franklin
Speaker 1: really helped establish the whole basis of the postal system
Speaker 1: as we know it today. He surveyed thousands of miles
Speaker 1: of post roads and made adjustments so that routes would
Speaker 1: be more efficient. He also instituted the idea of having
Speaker 1: postal riders traveled day and night. They'd use landers to
Speaker 1: light the way for their horses, and all these changes
Speaker 1: greatly improved the speed of the mail by some estimates,
Speaker 1: cutting delivery times in half. That's crazy. So I had
Speaker 1: no idea that the postal riders were around the clock.
Speaker 1: And I guess that mentality is the same one that
Speaker 1: gives it, like the post office create about not a
Speaker 1: snow nor rain. Yeah, there's the whole thing that people
Speaker 1: always talk about that, you know that neither snow nor
Speaker 1: rain or heat or gloom YadA, YadA, YadA. But actually
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting. There's no such thing as a postman's creed.
Speaker 1: I was looking at this and and and so people
Speaker 1: always associate that phrase with the postal Service because it's
Speaker 1: engraved on the outside of a famous post office in
Speaker 1: New York, But there's really no official motto for the USPS.
Speaker 1: In fact, the phrase isn't even original to our own
Speaker 1: postal system. It's actually a translation of the Greek historian
Speaker 1: Herodotus and his description of the ancient Persian male courier.
Speaker 1: So apparently they did all of this through neither heat
Speaker 1: nor rain or whatever it was, and all that gloom.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I guess that's a bit of
Speaker 1: a letdown, but it does feel strange that we expect
Speaker 1: our electric bills to be delivered during blizzards. I think
Speaker 1: they've actually done a pretty decent job of meeting these,
Speaker 1: you know, admittedly high expectations. Because there's one other thing
Speaker 1: that amazed me while doing the research, and that's just
Speaker 1: how versatile an organization the USPS is. So it's grown
Speaker 1: right along with the country for hundreds of years, and
Speaker 1: it's had to evolve the fifth expanding needs of the public. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so well, one of the first major transitions took place
Speaker 1: back in eightee, when the USPS first started delivering mail
Speaker 1: by train, and so prior to that most deliveries have
Speaker 1: been made on horseback or by horse drawn wagon. And
Speaker 1: when the mail volume increased, that's when things changed. But
Speaker 1: the burgeoning railroad, with its hubs in major cities, that
Speaker 1: all allowed the mail to be delivered up and down
Speaker 1: the East coast, and the tech changes only increased from there.
Speaker 1: So like cars and trucks arrived on the mail scene
Speaker 1: in and airplanes soon followed suit in nineteen eleven, I believe, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can still see that kind of
Speaker 1: versatility today. According to the Postal Service, they use every
Speaker 1: transportation method available to them while making their rounds. I
Speaker 1: was looking at a list of the different ways they
Speaker 1: deliver mail that include planes, trains, trucks, cars, boats, ferries, helicopters, subways,
Speaker 1: float planes, hovercraft, mules, bicycles, and of course feat I
Speaker 1: feel like I should be stunned by hovercrafts, but it's
Speaker 1: really mules that's confusing to me. Yeah, it's still on
Speaker 1: the list. There's actually one mail by mule route left
Speaker 1: in the US, and it's this eight mile trail that
Speaker 1: leads down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon where
Speaker 1: the Havasupai tribe. They've lived there for over eight hundred years,
Speaker 1: and so six days a week the mule train carries
Speaker 1: about four thousand pounds of male food supplies and even
Speaker 1: for Richard down these steep walls of the canyon. I
Speaker 1: was trying to look to see how long this took.
Speaker 1: It takes about three hours for the team to get
Speaker 1: down there, but it's a five hour trip coming back
Speaker 1: up and it happened six days a week. That's so crazy,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing that the mail really does go everywhere.
Speaker 1: But but you know, there's one delivery method that I'm
Speaker 1: kind of bummed is missing from the current list. Pneumatic tubes. Right, So,
Speaker 1: before mail trucks took to the streets, the six major
Speaker 1: cities I've got these written downs as at Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York, and Chicago, they all made use of underground
Speaker 1: networks of pressurized air tubes to deliver their mail. And
Speaker 1: at the system's peak in nineteen the city's had a
Speaker 1: combined total of over fifty six miles of pneumatic tubes,
Speaker 1: all zigzagging beneath the surface. And while these tube systems
Speaker 1: start popping up in the U S during the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: it's actually been used in Europe for almost forty years
Speaker 1: by that point. Apparently there were first put to use
Speaker 1: in stock exchanges so that traders could communicate messages to
Speaker 1: buy or sell stocks, and you know, a faster rate
Speaker 1: than telegraph, and it makes sense as a way to
Speaker 1: get messages across and the noumatic tubes or what the
Speaker 1: banks use, and those are really fast. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a hundred and twenty plus years ago,
Speaker 1: so were they actually fast in the eight nineties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The weird thing is they were pretty fast, Like the
Speaker 1: male tubes in the U s could move a canister
Speaker 1: holding up to six hundred letters an average speed of
Speaker 1: thirty five miles per hour. Yeah. So as one example,
Speaker 1: uh and their stories of postal workers who worked the
Speaker 1: tubes that they were known as rocketeers. But these rocketeers
Speaker 1: in downtown New York City actually ordered sandwiches from this
Speaker 1: deli up in the Bronx and apparently they'd received their
Speaker 1: orders via pneumatic tube within twenty minutes. I want to
Speaker 1: order a sandwich by Nematic. That is pretty awesome, although
Speaker 1: I'm guessing ordering lunch wasn't officially sanctioned for the use
Speaker 1: of the tubes. But so, did you come across any
Speaker 1: other weird stuff that was sent by these tubes? Definitely so.
Speaker 1: According to an article and written by Robert Cohen for
Speaker 1: the USPS website, there was this bizar our opening ceremony
Speaker 1: where the first tubes were installed at the General post
Speaker 1: Office in New York City and the higher ups they're
Speaker 1: basically wanted to show the employees what their new toy
Speaker 1: could do. So the very first male canister to travel
Speaker 1: the tubes. It contained a Bible, a flag, and a
Speaker 1: copy of the Constitution, which is super patriotic. And the
Speaker 1: second contained this imitation peach in honor of a Senator
Speaker 1: Chauncey Deput. Apparently he was fondly known as the Peach.
Speaker 1: Even more patriotic. And the third carrier is the weirdest.
Speaker 1: It had a black cat inet a black Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty weird. And as much as I dislike cats,
Speaker 1: I really hate the idea of somebody stuffing a cat
Speaker 1: into a tube. Was the ket Okay? Yeah, well, well
Speaker 1: the cat was fine. It was a little dazed according
Speaker 1: to witnesses, but otherwise all right. And sadly though, this
Speaker 1: was just the first of many animals to be shot
Speaker 1: around New York City through a pressurized tube. So Kenneth Stewart.
Speaker 1: He's the author of a Pneumatic Male Tubes and Operation
Speaker 1: of Automatic Railroads. He says that plenty of other animals
Speaker 1: made the journey to including dogs and mice and roosters,
Speaker 1: guinea pigs, monkeys, even some goldfish. Yeah, and in one
Speaker 1: of those cases it actually involved sending a sick cat
Speaker 1: to the animal hospital, so it was a good use.
Speaker 1: But the rest were mostly just examples of postal workers
Speaker 1: showing off. I said, it's not this Postal Services proudest moment,
Speaker 1: but but I actually don't get it. So animal cruelty aside.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like the tubes worked pretty well
Speaker 1: in these sprawling city so so why don't we see
Speaker 1: New Yorkers and others still using them? Yes, there's actually
Speaker 1: a few reasons. One was that the mail volumes kept
Speaker 1: increasing and it was simply too much for the tubes
Speaker 1: to handle, especially considering the systems pipes were only between
Speaker 1: two and eight inches wide. Oh my god, that poor cat.
Speaker 1: I can't about that. Yeah, But the main reason is
Speaker 1: that most of the tube systems were built and owned
Speaker 1: by private companies and and they merely rented to the
Speaker 1: Post Office. So, uh, these rental costs just got too
Speaker 1: high in the long term. And according to Kate Astor,
Speaker 1: who's the author of the work Anatomy of a City, uh,
Speaker 1: let me just find this quote. She wrote, by eighteen
Speaker 1: the federal government considered the annual rental payments seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per mile per annum made by the Post Office
Speaker 1: to be exorbitant, and they endorsed a new alternative with
Speaker 1: greater capacity, the automobile as the delivery method of choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as sad as it is to see does
Speaker 1: go away, I guess it, it makes sense and I
Speaker 1: can't deny that thematic tubes and mule trains they do
Speaker 1: add this pop of color to the Postal Services history though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally and in fact, well, why don't we get a
Speaker 1: historian online and see what other weird stories are lurking
Speaker 1: in the USPS archives? Sounds like a plan. So our
Speaker 1: guest today has been with the Smithsonian Institution for over
Speaker 1: three decades now, which Mango. I'm pretty sure that makes
Speaker 1: her super smart if I'm not mistaken so, but more
Speaker 1: importantly for today's episode, she's been curating exhibits at the
Speaker 1: National Postal Museum since it opened in nineteen. She's now
Speaker 1: the head curator of the history department there. Nancy Pope,
Speaker 1: welcome to Part time Genius. Thank you, it's good to
Speaker 1: be here. So, Nancy, we've had so much fun digging
Speaker 1: into the history of the Postal Service, and we've talked
Speaker 1: about all the things like, you know, delivery by mule
Speaker 1: and pneumatic tubes and all kinds of stuff. But but
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite delivery method that's actually no
Speaker 1: longer being used. I have a favorite method that was
Speaker 1: used once. What's that? It's missile mail. On June, the
Speaker 1: US Navy fired a Regulus one missile off the USS Barbaro,
Speaker 1: which was floating out in the Atlantic, and they directed
Speaker 1: it to land at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Mayport, Florida.
Speaker 1: And instead of having a nuclear weapon on board, they
Speaker 1: had two blue and red metal containers that held three
Speaker 1: thousand letters. Wow, So so why were they are doing this?
Speaker 1: Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield was a man who really wanted
Speaker 1: to modernize his post office, and he was doing anything
Speaker 1: and everything he could do to kind of try that,
Speaker 1: and he was trying a lot of silly things. He
Speaker 1: thought about missile mail, and he talked to the War Department,
Speaker 1: and they had their own little idea that they wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure the Russians knew that we were so
Speaker 1: good with our missiles that we could direct them to
Speaker 1: land anywhere we wanted, and they were so useful that
Speaker 1: we could use them too. I don't know carry mail.
Speaker 1: The letter that Summerfield since and was one of the
Speaker 1: three thousand letters they were actually all the same letters
Speaker 1: inside the missile. He says that this is just the beginning,
Speaker 1: but um, he's smarter than that, and I think it
Speaker 1: was a pr stunt from beginning to end for both
Speaker 1: the war and the post Office department. Actually, one of
Speaker 1: the other examples I saw was the railway mail crane,
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem that exciting at first, but can you
Speaker 1: explain how that worked in terms of the trains passing
Speaker 1: through towns pretty quickly. In the days of railway mail.
Speaker 1: Most of the times the trains would actually stop and
Speaker 1: exchange to the mail at a train station, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't stop at every single one, you know, most trains
Speaker 1: were not milk runs, and so to exchange the mail
Speaker 1: at some of these towns, they had to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to get the mail bag off and a
Speaker 1: mail bag onto the train while the train was moving,
Speaker 1: And they came up with these cranes, and the postmaster
Speaker 1: would go up and hook a mail bag, a leather
Speaker 1: mail bag to this crane, so it was passing at
Speaker 1: top and bottom stretched out so it was very tight.
Speaker 1: And then the train would come along and the clerk
Speaker 1: on the train would be looking out his door and
Speaker 1: he had a long iron crane that was attached to
Speaker 1: the door, and he'd swing that out. And you could
Speaker 1: never swing it out too early because then you knocked
Speaker 1: the telephone poles down. But you had to watch out
Speaker 1: and be very very careful until you saw the cranes
Speaker 1: and you slung your iron crane up and the crane
Speaker 1: would actually grab the mail bag and you would pull
Speaker 1: the crane back in, and while you're doing this, you
Speaker 1: would kick the mail bag full of mails for that
Speaker 1: station off the train. So you do it all of
Speaker 1: this at once, and you had to kick really hard
Speaker 1: because if you didn't, it got sucked under the train
Speaker 1: and mail bag would explode letters everywhere. And they called
Speaker 1: that a snowfall. Wow, that's pretty actually sounds like could
Speaker 1: be pretty dangerous at the same time. But that that's
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. So I know the main vehicle used
Speaker 1: by the postal service, this Grunman l LV or the
Speaker 1: Long Life Vehicle. I read somewhere recently that it gets
Speaker 1: an average fuel economy of about ten miles a gallon.
Speaker 1: If and if that's the case, what are your thoughts on,
Speaker 1: you know, why that vehicle was chosen and why we
Speaker 1: haven't seen a move away from that vehicle given how
Speaker 1: much fuel must be used in a given week. The
Speaker 1: l l V was selected after a test run. What
Speaker 1: happened was the Post Office Department UM was tired of
Speaker 1: just buying their vehicles off the rocks. They said, we
Speaker 1: have very special needs. We're going to list our needs
Speaker 1: and then we're going to stay build a vehicle to
Speaker 1: those needs. They were put over, you know, horrible ditches.
Speaker 1: They were put over cobblestones. They had to stop and start,
Speaker 1: stop and start stops, all the things that are a
Speaker 1: male vehicle has to do that our regular cars don't.
Speaker 1: And the LLLV, the grummin l l V, won the test.
Speaker 1: And because they won that test, that's why they were selected.
Speaker 1: And they were also selected because they could last twenty
Speaker 1: five years. A bigger problem right now is twenty five
Speaker 1: years has expired or most of that fleet, and the
Speaker 1: Post Office Department very much wants to get new cars,
Speaker 1: and they have started bringing in new vehicles um bit
Speaker 1: by bit, but it's gonna be you know, millions of
Speaker 1: dollars to replace the total LLV fleets it's left. So
Speaker 1: let's talk stamps for a second. Are there any historical
Speaker 1: figures you feel are overdue for a recognition on the stamp.
Speaker 1: I would think Arthur Summerhills should be on a stamp
Speaker 1: if he hasn't been yet. And that was the postmaster
Speaker 1: general who did the missile mail, just because he came
Speaker 1: up with the whole concept of modernizing the post office
Speaker 1: department in the fifties, because it had been stuck in
Speaker 1: the thirties with no money because of the depression in
Speaker 1: the forties, with no money because of World War Two.
Speaker 1: So by the fifties they were using thirty year old
Speaker 1: trucks that were barely being held together by you know,
Speaker 1: spit and glue. Uh, they're mechan there's systems of moving
Speaker 1: the mail inside a post office were just antiquated. Everything
Speaker 1: was old and i'm stupid and rotten and nothing was
Speaker 1: working well. And he came in and basically convinced Congress
Speaker 1: to give him a lot of money to modernize things,
Speaker 1: and he kick started a whole lot of stuff in
Speaker 1: the post office department. Got automation going, computerized sorting systems,
Speaker 1: the zip code system, all of that would have never
Speaker 1: exists if it wasn't for Summerfield. So, yeah, get him
Speaker 1: lot of stamp. Yeah, Well, we'll start the petition. Yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: for all of our listeners that are visiting the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Museums anytime in the near future, we hope you'll check
Speaker 1: out the National Postal Museum. It is a fascinating place
Speaker 1: to visit. But Nancy, thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on part Time Genius. That was my pleasure. You're listening
Speaker 1: to part Time Genius, and we're talking about the fascinating
Speaker 1: evolution of the US Postal Service. So well, we've mentioned
Speaker 1: a few times now that an increase in mail volume
Speaker 1: was the main reason for a bunch of the mail
Speaker 1: system's major changes, Like it's the reason we switched from
Speaker 1: horses to carriages and then from tubes to trucks. And
Speaker 1: it's also why the number of post offices bloon from
Speaker 1: you know, just seventy five way back in sev over
Speaker 1: twenty eight thousand in eighteen sixty. And in fact, this
Speaker 1: ever increasing mail volume became the accepted status quo for
Speaker 1: over two hundred years, no matter what changes came in
Speaker 1: the form of new transportation styles or competing communication systems
Speaker 1: like telegraphs or telephones or radios or TVs. Like the
Speaker 1: one truth for the postal service was that mail volume
Speaker 1: just continued to go up and up. But all of
Speaker 1: that changed in two thousand seven, when for the first
Speaker 1: time in history, mail started to decline. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: that was the year that the effects of the Internet
Speaker 1: really started to catch up to them. And and ever
Speaker 1: since then, the net mail volume flowing through the system
Speaker 1: is decreased every single year. And it's a big problem
Speaker 1: for the agency, especially being a self funded agency, because
Speaker 1: any decrease in mail is a decrease in revenue exactly.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, the public still expects to
Speaker 1: receive mail every day of the week at any address
Speaker 1: in the country. This has led to the postal Service
Speaker 1: having to increase its number of delivery points, which opposites
Speaker 1: operating costs even as profits steadily shrink. It's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not all gloom and doom, though I was. I
Speaker 1: was reading this article on upworthy that proposed an interesting solution.
Speaker 1: You know. They were looking at their their financial woes
Speaker 1: and trying to come up with things to do, and
Speaker 1: there's the idea for post offices to start offering financial services,
Speaker 1: things like check cashing and payday loans. It's roughly thirty
Speaker 1: five million American households rely on alternative financial services like
Speaker 1: that instead of traditional banking, and since they currently have
Speaker 1: to go through private institutions, you know, for these different
Speaker 1: kinds of services, it can wind up cost way more
Speaker 1: money than it should. In fact, according to a report
Speaker 1: released by the USPS, Americans spend the total of about
Speaker 1: eighty nine billion dollars on interest and fees from these
Speaker 1: alternative financial services. This was from back in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: which is crazy, right, it really is. But but see,
Speaker 1: if post offices were allowed to compete in that market,
Speaker 1: they could undercut the competition, save millions for Americans and
Speaker 1: secure this nice new revenue stream in the process. At
Speaker 1: least that's the hope, and and it seems like a
Speaker 1: win win and and not that far fetched the concept.
Speaker 1: I mean, post offices already offer some banking services like
Speaker 1: selling money orders and cashing treasury checks. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: really the main thing preventing this from happening, it would
Speaker 1: be the banks themselves. They have an awful lot of
Speaker 1: clout and government and of course they don't like the
Speaker 1: idea of a public institution muscling into their territory. But
Speaker 1: who knows. I mean, if the situation continues to worsen
Speaker 1: for the USPS, those voices of opposition might cease to
Speaker 1: carry as much sway. Yeah, and the good news is
Speaker 1: that history is on the postal services side, so it's
Speaker 1: faced some any dire challenges in the past, and it's
Speaker 1: always smuddled through. I mean, if you need any evidence
Speaker 1: of the resilience of the USPS, you just have to
Speaker 1: look at zip codes. That's a good point. And there's
Speaker 1: definitely an aspect of mail we take for granted. So
Speaker 1: so actually I think we should spend a little time
Speaker 1: talking about zip codes, sure, so we can give a
Speaker 1: little background on it. For starters. Zip codes are a
Speaker 1: much more recent innovation than you'd guess. Although they were
Speaker 1: first developed as this time saving tool to help understaff
Speaker 1: post offices, and this was during World War Two, they
Speaker 1: weren't actually putting to use until twenty years later in ninete.
Speaker 1: And this was a time before the Postal Service was
Speaker 1: self funding. It's still received the bulk of its funds
Speaker 1: from Congress, but in the mid sixties Congress wasn't supplying
Speaker 1: enough cash to keep up with the post war mail boom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and post offices wanted new sorting machines so they could
Speaker 1: finally automate the process instead of continuing to wage this
Speaker 1: really unwinnable war that was hand sorting at the time.
Speaker 1: But Congress thought they were making a big deal out
Speaker 1: of nothing. I mean, after all, they had handled mail
Speaker 1: the old fashioned way for over a century at this point,
Speaker 1: so as they saw, you know, why fix what isn't broken,
Speaker 1: except it was broken. I mean. The proof finally came
Speaker 1: in October of nineteen sixty six, and that's the month
Speaker 1: when a combination of election mailings and holiday season advertisements
Speaker 1: they totally clogged the system. It was like a mail
Speaker 1: fat burg. And then the whole thing came to a
Speaker 1: staff like the Chicago Post Office, which was the largest
Speaker 1: in the country at the time, halted mail delivery for
Speaker 1: a full three weeks while they tried to make sense
Speaker 1: of this volume and and all these letters and parcels
Speaker 1: that needed to be sorted. I mean, the whole thing
Speaker 1: led Congress back to the move to automation, And at
Speaker 1: the center of it all was this old zip code idea,
Speaker 1: which was finally taken off the shelf and put into action.
Speaker 1: And with the new machinery and the advent of zip codes,
Speaker 1: postal workers were able to sort up to thirty thousand
Speaker 1: letters an hour, which was nearly ten times as many
Speaker 1: as a single worker could sort by hand in the
Speaker 1: same amount of time, which I find almost as baffling
Speaker 1: that a single worker was previously able to sort three thousand.
Speaker 1: I know, us unbelievable, but obviously this was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge improvement. But I do think we should take a
Speaker 1: second to explain the role ZIP codes played in that process, because,
Speaker 1: you know, as often as we're exposed the ZIP codes,
Speaker 1: I feel like most of us don't really know that
Speaker 1: much about them, or that they're actually an acronym. ZIP
Speaker 1: stands for Zoning Improvement Plan. Yeah, and and the name
Speaker 1: really does say at all. So the numbers were part
Speaker 1: of the plan to improve the way that mail was
Speaker 1: sorted by address, and a ZIP code specified which region
Speaker 1: or zone of the country to which a piece of
Speaker 1: mail should be sent. And instead of hand sorting letters
Speaker 1: by city address, which obviously took a good deal of
Speaker 1: time in some cases and required, you know, knowledge of geography,
Speaker 1: machines were able to electronically scan the short string of
Speaker 1: numbers and sort the mail using that coded information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's another thing that I think most of us
Speaker 1: don't really understand is what exactly those five numbers means.
Speaker 1: So I'll just explain that. So, the first digit represents
Speaker 1: the region where the address is located. So for the
Speaker 1: purposes of zip codes, the country split into ten zones.
Speaker 1: You start on the East coast, and then you increase
Speaker 1: that number as you move across to the west coast.
Speaker 1: So you know, Maine and New York have zip codes
Speaker 1: that start with zero and one, Maryland's a two, and
Speaker 1: then you go all the way across the country. You
Speaker 1: get to California and Washington and they begin with the
Speaker 1: number nine. That's pretty awesome. And and I'm guessing the
Speaker 1: other four digits specify the location of an address even
Speaker 1: further Yep, they get even more specific, so that the
Speaker 1: second two digits correspond to a smaller area of the
Speaker 1: country and and the central postal facility that services that region,
Speaker 1: and then the final two digits signify the actual local
Speaker 1: post office that delivers to that given address. But to me,
Speaker 1: the best part of it was that the USPS had
Speaker 1: this advertising campaign they launched in the sixties to raise
Speaker 1: awareness of the new system. Oh that's so, there was
Speaker 1: this little jingle used to promote it or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's underselling it a bit. So it was actually
Speaker 1: this fifteen minute musical p s A performed by none
Speaker 1: other than the Swinging Six Swinging I love that. It
Speaker 1: was fifteen minutes. My god, I know. And and there's
Speaker 1: no way to do this thing justice by talking about it.
Speaker 1: You really need to YouTube it. But the short of
Speaker 1: it is that the Postal Service financed this incredibly campy
Speaker 1: video as a means of like selling the public on
Speaker 1: the importance of ZIP codes and how it was going
Speaker 1: to make everything speedier and more efficient. And they also
Speaker 1: created this new cartoon mascot named Mr Zip and that
Speaker 1: really helped drive home the point as well. I remember
Speaker 1: Mr Zip, that creepy little male man stick figured And
Speaker 1: they kind of went all out with this campaign. I mean,
Speaker 1: they really had no faith in the American public to
Speaker 1: write these five extra digits to they apparently not. But
Speaker 1: Mr Zip in the Swinging Six like, they really caught
Speaker 1: on and and Mr Zip became something of a pop
Speaker 1: culture icon in his own right. He appeared on magazines
Speaker 1: and mail trucks and television and radio ads and even
Speaker 1: on things like lunch boxes. But but of course, the
Speaker 1: surest sign of mr Zip's success was that by seventy
Speaker 1: which was really just seven years after the start of
Speaker 1: the campaign, zip code use had risen to let me
Speaker 1: find these numbers eighty six percent nationwide, and by seventy
Speaker 1: nine it had climbed to nine. I mean, those are
Speaker 1: pretty solid results, and it does make you feel for
Speaker 1: mr Zip a little bit. I mean, he seems that
Speaker 1: played a pretty big role in all of this. Kind
Speaker 1: of the uh I don't know, like the smokey bear
Speaker 1: of the postal service, but you don't find him anywhere
Speaker 1: these days. I know he's hanging out with Clippy for Microsoft,
Speaker 1: but I feel like you're preaching to acquire here. You
Speaker 1: know what's weird, though, is that the USPS actually did
Speaker 1: try out one other mascot before mr Zip and it's
Speaker 1: kind of a weird story. But before we get into it,
Speaker 1: let's break for a quiz. Okay man goes So, when
Speaker 1: we put out a call for listeners to let us
Speaker 1: know if they wanted to come on and play a quiz,
Speaker 1: one of them wrote in and it's actually a mail carrier,
Speaker 1: which is perfect for today's episode. I know, it's so awesome, alright, so,
Speaker 1: Sarah Hofferbert, welcome to Part Time Genius. Hi, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Sarah. Where are you you delivering mail today?
Speaker 1: I'm in Rochester, New York today? Okay, all right, I
Speaker 1: assume that's where you deliver mail every day around the city,
Speaker 1: different places yet, okay? And how long have you been
Speaker 1: a and and his mail carrier? The correct term? What
Speaker 1: is the official title? My my My job title is
Speaker 1: that I'm a letter carrier, but mail carriers just just fine? Okay?
Speaker 1: And how long have you been doing this? About four years? Okay?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you for writing in. We're We're
Speaker 1: glad you're a regular listener of Part Time Genius, and
Speaker 1: so we are going to put you to the test. Mango.
Speaker 1: What is our quiz called today? It's called going Postal
Speaker 1: and it's a true false quiz. If you know everything
Speaker 1: about the post office is history, it should be pretty easy, alright.
Speaker 1: You know every single thing about the history of the
Speaker 1: post office. There's nothing I don't know. All right, confidence,
Speaker 1: here we go. We're gonna read you a statement and
Speaker 1: all you need to do is tell us whether it's
Speaker 1: true or false. You ready to go? Yes? Okay? Question
Speaker 1: number one, the first post office in Colonial America was
Speaker 1: in a bar. That is true. Exactly, you're right. So
Speaker 1: it was set up in sixteen thirty nine and operated
Speaker 1: out of the Boston home in tavern of Richard Fairbanks,
Speaker 1: where he liked to serve glasses of strong water. Excellent,
Speaker 1: All right, she has one for one, okay, Sarah. Question
Speaker 1: number two. In Luxembourg, the post office trained Saint Bernard's
Speaker 1: to carry letters to homes, but the system only lasted
Speaker 1: a month thanks to the city's squirrel population. That sounds
Speaker 1: like something I would want to be true, But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. I mean, it's not a totally crazy idea,
Speaker 1: because Belgium did try delivering mail by cats for a
Speaker 1: little bit that that was a total disaster. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so far, Sarah, you're delivering this is great. Question number three.
Speaker 1: In Victorian London, mail was delivered twelve times a day.
Speaker 1: That is also true. She's amazing at this. Yeah, mail
Speaker 1: was treated more like instant messenger back then, when people
Speaker 1: actually like sent immediate sponsors back and they get upset
Speaker 1: if you didn't respond. Okay, alright, two left, She's three
Speaker 1: for three so far. Question number four. When Harry Winston
Speaker 1: donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian in nineteen It
Speaker 1: was actually sent via US mail. True or faults. I
Speaker 1: want to say that's true. It is true. So they
Speaker 1: sent it by first class mail for just two dollars
Speaker 1: and forty four cents and the Smithsonian still has the packaging. Wow,
Speaker 1: and how much was that worth? Three million dollars? Any
Speaker 1: a little bit of insurance on that? That is incredible.
Speaker 1: All right, we are four for four. Coming up with
Speaker 1: the last question. Let's see if Sarah can score perfect.
Speaker 1: Let's see all right, question number five. Ben Franklin was
Speaker 1: so obsessed with yams as a tasty snack that in
Speaker 1: the winter he insisted that every mail carrier received a warm,
Speaker 1: grilled yam before servicing their route through or faults. That
Speaker 1: would be delicious in the winter. But I want to
Speaker 1: say that's false. That's amazing. You an incredible five for five. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wanted that one to be true so much. But mango.
Speaker 1: But alright, so Sarah went an incredible five for five.
Speaker 1: What does she want today? So? Uh, Sarah actually gets
Speaker 1: an official part time genius Certificate of Genius, which we're
Speaker 1: we're just making and she's gonna be the first recipient
Speaker 1: all right, we will send that to you. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: will send that to you and the male safe travels
Speaker 1: on your route today. And thanks again for joining us,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Alright, Mango, So you were
Speaker 1: talking about this other postal mascot before the break, So,
Speaker 1: so what's weird about it? Well, for for starters, the
Speaker 1: mascot was a dog, which is a surprising choice for
Speaker 1: postal workers given the history between the two. All Right, well,
Speaker 1: I know you're usually the tangent person, but I feel
Speaker 1: like I want to go on one here as well,
Speaker 1: because I was actually kind of curious about the deal
Speaker 1: with dogs and postal workers, so I was looking into
Speaker 1: it a little bit, and and actually this psychology of
Speaker 1: having their turf invaded and understanding why they always go
Speaker 1: after the postal workers. So the situations made way worse
Speaker 1: by the fact that the mail carriers keep coming day
Speaker 1: in and day out, and and that's something I had
Speaker 1: not really thought about before. So it reinforces the idea
Speaker 1: that the dog needs to defend its territory. And you know,
Speaker 1: because the carriers do eventually walk away from the home,
Speaker 1: the dog feels rewarded and it's likely to repeat that
Speaker 1: same behavior next time. It's basically the definition of a
Speaker 1: vicious cycle, and a major emphasis on the vicious part
Speaker 1: here because actually I was looking at the numbers. According
Speaker 1: to the USPS, more than six thousand of its mail
Speaker 1: carriers are attacked by dogs each man. That's terrible, and
Speaker 1: I'm actually glad I get to talk about this mascot now.
Speaker 1: It's it's a nice throwback to these days when dogs
Speaker 1: and postal workers were actually friends. But uh, at least
Speaker 1: that was the case with this particular dog named Ony
Speaker 1: that was the actual dog. Is that this is a
Speaker 1: real dog? Owny? Yeah, so only was a stray mutt
Speaker 1: who started joining a mail clerk on his morning walk. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was in Albany, New York, way back in and
Speaker 1: this morning routine gradually led to any hanging out at
Speaker 1: the office during the day, and he became friends with
Speaker 1: other postal clerks, and he also developed this strange affinity
Speaker 1: for the texture of mail bags, both the texture and
Speaker 1: the smell. And once his clerk pal moved away, the
Speaker 1: other mail clerks took him in and from there only
Speaker 1: started following his beloved mail bags onto mail wagons and trains,
Speaker 1: and he rode with the bags in the post office
Speaker 1: train cars traveling all over the country and later all
Speaker 1: over the world, and all these railroad workers were cool
Speaker 1: with some random dog just traveling around with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently they loved Onny. So train wrecks were really common
Speaker 1: at the time, but no train ever crashed with one
Speaker 1: on board. And he kind of became this good luck
Speaker 1: charm for the railway mail clerks and this unofficial mascot
Speaker 1: whose many travels were marked by people placing medals and
Speaker 1: tags on his collar. That's really sweet. But so did
Speaker 1: you get to keep one of the mail bags when
Speaker 1: he retired? No, so that this story actually has kind
Speaker 1: of a sad ending. So Oney never made it to retirement.
Speaker 1: In June, only boarded a mail train for Toledo, Ohio.
Speaker 1: And while only was making his rounds and you know,
Speaker 1: greeting all these people in Toledo, one postal clerk showed
Speaker 1: him do a newspaper reporter and the full details have
Speaker 1: never been investigated, but supposedly only became ill tempered and
Speaker 1: he was shot on June. God MANO, that really took
Speaker 1: a turn there, I know. But like I said, we
Speaker 1: don't really know that full details, but we do know
Speaker 1: that the mail clerks were totally devastated. They took up
Speaker 1: this collection and used the money to have only preserved
Speaker 1: and today visitors to the National Postal Museum in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Can actually see one on display, still wearing
Speaker 1: his harness and some of his favorite tags. That's pretty neat. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that's about as happy of an inning as
Speaker 1: you can get with a story like that. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear they put his remains in the
Speaker 1: museum instead of just stuffing him in one of those
Speaker 1: thematic twos we were talking about earlier. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: only never traveled by two, but there are plenty of
Speaker 1: animals who make trips by mail even today. You know.
Speaker 1: I saw that, like, apparently live scorpions are totally fine
Speaker 1: to mail, and you know, as long as they're to
Speaker 1: be used for medical or anti venom research. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you prove that, but that's those are the
Speaker 1: reasons you can mail them, and they're clearly marked as
Speaker 1: live scorpions. Also saw that baby alligators are mailable too,
Speaker 1: as long as they're under twenty. This all feels totally
Speaker 1: crazy to me, but but by the way, my my
Speaker 1: favorite animal by mail story is the one about this
Speaker 1: guy in Ohio who mailed his pet chameleon to Florida
Speaker 1: so they could have a warmer place to live. He
Speaker 1: was worried a little guy wouldn't make it through the
Speaker 1: cold winter in Ohio, so he slipped the lizard into
Speaker 1: this pre stamped envelope and mailed it off to the
Speaker 1: Sunshine State. So did this Did the chameleon make it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The sender had requested that he'd be informed when his
Speaker 1: pet arrived, and sure enough, Orlando's postmaster obliged. He responded, Uh,
Speaker 1: let me find this, Dear David. I received your chameleon
Speaker 1: yesterday and he was immediately released on the post office grounds.
Speaker 1: Best wishes for a merry Christmas. That's an animal in
Speaker 1: the mail story. Alright. You know, still as weird as
Speaker 1: mailing around chameleons and alligators and scorpions as it's it's
Speaker 1: nothing compared to mailing actual people, which I know we
Speaker 1: both saw in our research has actually happened. I know
Speaker 1: I was hoping this would come off. So there's such
Speaker 1: a long successful history of people sending themselves and each
Speaker 1: other through the mail, and as far as we know,
Speaker 1: the first person to travel by mail was baby James Beagle.
Speaker 1: He was this eight month old boy whose parents mailed
Speaker 1: him to his grandmother a few miles away. Eight months old,
Speaker 1: I know a baby Graham. And this was just a
Speaker 1: few weeks after the Postal Service began transporting larger parcels
Speaker 1: rather than just letters or magazines, so it really didn't
Speaker 1: take long for someone to try mailing a human. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the main appeal was that postage was way cheaper than
Speaker 1: a train ticket. Baby James's travel apparently only cost his
Speaker 1: parents fifteen cents and stints, though to be fair they
Speaker 1: did spring for fifty dollars and insured nice the parents
Speaker 1: of the year right there. But you're right though, mailing
Speaker 1: yourself is definitely an inexpensive way to travel. I was
Speaker 1: reading about this professional javelin thrower from Australia's name was
Speaker 1: Red Spears, and in nineteen sixty four he went up
Speaker 1: stranded in England after failing to make the cut for
Speaker 1: the English Olympic team. He was all set to return
Speaker 1: home and then his wallet was stolen and so he
Speaker 1: was left flat broken without any way back to Australia.
Speaker 1: His solution, I'll seal himself in a small crate and
Speaker 1: actually mail himself cash on delivery. So how long was
Speaker 1: he in there? I think it was like a three
Speaker 1: day trip and all. And this this includes this particularly
Speaker 1: toasty layover and Mumbai where you know, his limited provisions
Speaker 1: and makeshift bathroom slash water bottle. I mean, these things
Speaker 1: were stretched to their limits on this three day trip.
Speaker 1: And in the end though, the plan worked and he
Speaker 1: made it safely back to Australia. Of course, reporters quickly
Speaker 1: caught wind of this embarrassing ordeal, but Spears even managed
Speaker 1: to turn that to his advantage. The airline itself took
Speaker 1: pity on him forgave his dad. He even went on
Speaker 1: to co author a book about the experience. It was titled,
Speaker 1: of course, out of the Box. That's pretty great. But
Speaker 1: my favorite story of all time of someone shifting himself
Speaker 1: in a box has to be Henry Box Brown, the
Speaker 1: slave who mailed himself to freedom. Oh that's a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should tell this story definitely. So in Eine Brown
Speaker 1: escaped his master's property in Virginia and with the help
Speaker 1: of some abolitionists, he mailed himself across state lines to
Speaker 1: the free state of Pennsylvania. It cost him eighty six dollars,
Speaker 1: which is a little more than today, and the trip
Speaker 1: lasted a miserable twenty seven hours, but it actually went
Speaker 1: off without a hitch. The next day, Brown was successfully
Speaker 1: delivered to Freedom, and he went on to become a
Speaker 1: well known entertainer and abolitionist speaker in his later life.
Speaker 1: And that was all thanks to the U S. Mail System. Man, Well,
Speaker 1: if that's not a ringing endorsement for the USPS, I'm
Speaker 1: honestly not sure what is. Yeah, but what do you
Speaker 1: say we now honor one of our own sacred institutions
Speaker 1: with a good old fashioned fact. Yeah, I'll start with
Speaker 1: the story about how a stamp was used to do
Speaker 1: some serious trash talking and almost started a war. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, Nicaragua's postal service put out a stamp
Speaker 1: that featured a map of Nicaragua. The stamp also showed
Speaker 1: Honduras north of Nicaragua's border, but instead of just letting
Speaker 1: it be, the stamp labeled the territory quote territory in dispute.
Speaker 1: And this was despite the fact that the territory issues
Speaker 1: have been settled thirty years earlier. When the stamps first
Speaker 1: started arriving with mail and Honduras people started rioting and
Speaker 1: a mob showed up at the Nicaraguan embassy, and after
Speaker 1: both countries sent troops to the border, the US and
Speaker 1: Mexico actually had to interview in just to prevent the war.
Speaker 1: All right, this is pretty different one. So ever, wonder
Speaker 1: where the mail goes when it's the term that it
Speaker 1: cannot be delivered and the postal service doesn't know where
Speaker 1: to return it to. It's actually not far at all
Speaker 1: from where we're sitting right now. This is to the
Speaker 1: Mail Recovery Center here in Atlanta. So sadly it took
Speaker 1: on this name in nine when its name was changed
Speaker 1: from what had been the Dead Letter Office, which I
Speaker 1: just love so much more. But the MRC then auctions
Speaker 1: off these items of value, not not individually. They're actually
Speaker 1: sold as these big groups of things. So there have
Speaker 1: even been entire tractor trailers of books sold as an example.
Speaker 1: That's kind of awesome. So I was looking at some
Speaker 1: stats on junk mail. The amount of junk mail received
Speaker 1: by all American households in the US each year is
Speaker 1: the equivalent of about hundred million trees, and junk mail
Speaker 1: manufacturing creates the equivalent of three point seven million cars
Speaker 1: in greenhouse gas emissions. Alright, So, hikers in Nevada and
Speaker 1: Utah and other areas of these vast landscapes have been
Speaker 1: puzzled by these huge concrete arrows on the ground. But
Speaker 1: if you were to fly over these arrows, you'd actually
Speaker 1: see that they're part of this cross country path of arrows.
Speaker 1: So in the nies, Congress approved the creation of a
Speaker 1: nearly three thousand mile line of the seventy foot long
Speaker 1: yellow concrete arrows, stretching from New York to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: They're about ten miles apart, and the purpose was to
Speaker 1: give pilots of the time away to navigate safely across
Speaker 1: the various thirteen stops from coast to coast, which is
Speaker 1: actually awesome. So until the nineteen sixties, most college students
Speaker 1: actually mailed their dirty clothes home to mom to wash,
Speaker 1: and this was until washing machines became more common. It
Speaker 1: was also expected that mom would send your clean underwear
Speaker 1: back with a fresh batch of cookies. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: hoping my mom's not listening to this, because because I
Speaker 1: still send my clothes home to mom, I don't want
Speaker 1: her to know that most people don't do this anymore,
Speaker 1: but I gotta admit it. That's a great fact. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to give you this fact off. Congratulations. Now,
Speaker 1: if we missed any of your favorite postal service facts,
Speaker 1: you can email us as always part Time Genius at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com or call seven Fact hot
Speaker 1: Line one eight four four pt Genius. It is still
Speaker 1: seven right, mengo. Okay, that's great. Well, thank you guys
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't
Speaker 1: be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
Speaker 1: things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does
Speaker 1: the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
Speaker 1: does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
Speaker 1: exact producer thing. Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support
Speaker 1: from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Speaker 1: Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the show to
Speaker 1: your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard,
Speaker 1: we hope you'll subscribe. And if you really really like
Speaker 1: what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review
Speaker 1: for us. Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who