SYSK Selects: How the U.S. Postal Service Works

production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Uh, there's Charles w Chuck Bryant. I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now, the Warrant Peace Report, warr in peace dot Org, etcetera. I'm Stevenski. How you doing good. Jerry just said let's do this old school right before she recorded, and I have no idea what she meant. Speck in like, yeah, you know she's back. I thought she meant, let's make it crappy in five minutes long, and we need like little empty tin cans

to speak and dude, make it sound right. How you doing, Jerry? That's great. Jerry gave us the thumbs up, I know in our new murder room. Um, Jerry is within our eyesight again after a long layoff where she was not within our range of viewing. It's kind of weird because now I'm looking at you, but I can clearly see my peripheral vision that she says on Facebook. She's waving, she's brusting her teeth, she's reranging the severed human heads

that are in jars all around the place. That's creepy. Um. You want to talk post office man, you want to give the disclaimer that we're only talking about the post office in the US of A. Think he just did. Okay, Um, we don't know how it works in your country. No, And actually it's probably not nearly as interesting as what's going on with the US Postal Service, the USPS. Yeah, because I don't know if you know this or not chucked, but the U s PS is in a lot of

trouble there. Yeah, there's solvency that the amount of money that they have to keep the lights on and keep everything going is expected to run out in October of two thousand thirteen if they don't do something. Yeah, that's this year. Yeah, I think they lost sixteen billion dollars last year, yes, and five billion the year before. So that's a three times as much money in a year.

That's bad news. Here's the caveat to that sixteen billion dollar loss, though, eleven billion of that was in payments to uh, the future benefits of postal workers that have not yet retired. But well, and the posts serve. The Postal Service is the only federal agency of any sort that is required to prepay its employees benefits for the future. In two thousand and six, a lamed accession of Congress said, you know what, you guys need to make sure that

your workers are taken care of. So you guys have to start pre paying um and over the next ten years. And they have been, and they've been bleeding money. I mean, like a sixteen billion dollar loss, but eleven billion of it was to these future payments. I guess that would

make sense. Then then if you took out that eleven they would just be about the same loss as before, a mere five billion a year, right, But and that's a lot of money to lose, it is, but um they're figuring out ways to make up for that extra loss, and one of the big ones it's on the table now is cutting out Saturday delivery. They figured they can recoup two billion dollars a year by doing that, so then they're down to three. The thing is is the

post the post office. It's a part of the executive branch. Man, it's all over the place. It's a part of the executive branch. It's a part of the federal government. But it gets zero dollars in tax revenue. And it's also a thrill kill cult, right exactly. That's the horrible secret of the US. Right. Um. So they get no money besides what they can make off of their own revenue corporation. Right. Um, So they get no but they get but they're also

under the purview of the federal the federal government. It's a weird, weird thing, and they can't act without asking Congress. And Congress hasn't exactly been forthcoming lately. They haven't approved the Saturday thinget have they Congress. Here's the thing they've been trying to get Congress throughpprove that forever. The Senate passed a bill that said, after two years, we'll let you cut out Saturday service, will give you eleven billion

dollars in over payments. That you guys made towards the retirement stuff, all this stuff back that went to the House, and the House didn't do anything with it. Right, So you know the fiscal cliff, Well, the the US Congress passed the stop gap measure, basically a federal budget that says, within this period, we're still able to operate, right, And the USPS says, ha ha, you didn't include our mandate from nineteen one that we have to carry out Saturday

service in that stop gap. So technically, under current federal law, we don't have to carry out Saturday service. And they're arguing it legally, so they're just saying that's the loophold are going to use to shut down Saturday service. Sack medicines, just packages. They're going to deliver packages on Saturday. And

here's a really good reason. Express mail. They're revenues from packages of increased over the last ten years, whereas first class mail, you know, letters have gone down, I believe. So they're making all almost all of their money because it's only forty cents to mail a letter from Florida to Hawaii. Um. But they make, however much shipping in the shipping game, which is where they make all their money, which is ironically the one place they don't have a

monopoly as far as the mail goes. I'm glad to see medicine mail order medicine on that list to express mail packages in medicine, because at first I was like, who cares, I don't need you don't yet. I don't need my mail on a Saturday, right, but you need your medicine on a Saturday, or else you go blind. That's why they included that as a you know something, they would still deliver, right and post offices that are already open on Saturdays will still be open on Saturdays.

So if you want to go to your PO box, maybe there'll be some mail, maybe there won't be who knows, I bet you've had a PO box. I've been thinking about this, haven't you have? You know, you just struck me as a kind of person that would have had a PO box at one point. You know, that's where I get all my guns in the mail. So, UM, I'm pretty worked up about this, as you can see. Um, it's kind of interesting. And who would have thought that the postal service would ever be interesting? Uh? Sure, I

think parts of this are very interesting. Um, and we would just want to go ahead and say hello to all of our postal carriers out there that um listen to our show who who wont us over during the Bush Era? Because we've got an emails from you guys and gals. Yeah, including one of our favorite people out there is a postal worker, very nostrim. Oh yeah, this one should really be a tribute to Van Nostris. I didn't he's a carrier. I'm he's always been kind of

cryptic about what he does. But I'm under the distinct impression that he's employed by the Postal Service. A right, Bangalore's Van Nostrian. Yeah, this is for you. Um, But okay, so let's talk about this. Let's talk about the Postal service man. I'm all jazzed about the USPS. Dude, glad you are. Um. So, for a little while, even after the advent of electronic mail, the postal services, the amount of mail they were delivering was still increasing. As of

two thousand seven, it was on an upward trajectory. Sorry, two thousand six, right, two hundred and thirteen billion, one hundred and thirty seven million pieces of mail that year. Yeah, it's down to one sixty seven now and then Uh, their when was this written? Do you know? I think two thousand seven eight. Okay, so then they had seven hundred thousand employees. Now they have about five hundred and eighty thousand. So they've been in and trim the budget

mode I think for the past few years. Well, and the reason why. In two thousand and six they also made seventy two point eight billion dollars. I mean those stamps they add up, you know. Um, in two thousand and eleven they made sixty six billion. Wow. Not bad. Yeah, but they're still losing a lot of money. I mean that's what seven billion dollars in difference in just five years. Yeah, it's not good. It's not good. Um So, where the where'd all this come from? Chuck? It came from back

yonder day. You know. People have always need to communicate, obviously from long distances. And uh in sixteen thirty nine, Um, they you know, colonists here in the in the New I guess they weren't United States yet, but in the New World needed to get word back to England occasionally and say things like hey, quit bugging us, or hey, sind it's more t and crumpets and um. So the

first official postal service was established in sixteen thirty nine. UM. Richard Fairbank's tavern in Boston was the official mail drop for overseas there in Massachusetts, and that was the place to go if you wanted to mail something. Yeah, and I couldn't find what happened or where it went on the other side of the Atlantic. Probably I would imagine then you just went to that pub and said, hey,

is there any mail? And they said no, and you turn around and traveled the five miles back to your village. So that was step one. Step two was about uh forty. So nine years later three William penn established very famous person obviously um, the first official post office in penn Sylvania. He give his name after him. That's right, and uh,

I love this side note. Here in the South, private messages were just sent between plantations, so they would probably just give it to a slave and say carry this over to that guy. Uh. And then flash forward a little bit more. Um, the British Crown gave to a man named Thomas Neil a twenty one year grant for the postal service in the United States, and he paid UM like seven seven shillings a year. So that's nothing, right,

he still died in debt with the monopoly. So the postal service has always been kind of tricky to call money from. Interesting. So that continued until seventeen seventy four, and a lot of big stuff was happening around that time, like, Hey, we don't like you anymore in England controlling us over here and taxing us. So we're gonna start and establish our own constitutional post office for for any kind of

mail going from anywhere, basically intercolonial mail. Yeah. Yeah, it was just was very cutting edge at that time, I'm sure. And actually, um, you know that when the British were carrying out the postal service on behalf of the colonies. In the colonies, um, there was a guy named Benjamin Franklin who was appointed the postmaster of Philadelphia and he actually killed it as postmaster, of course he did. He like totally improved the road. He said, like, we're gonna

start working like twenty four hours a day. We're gonna have like lots of shifts, we're going to put up milestones like the The postal service helped improve the connectedness of the colonies thanks to him. So when the Continental Congress said, hey, we want our own Postal Service. Ben Franklin became the first Postmaster General, and of course he ran it like a tight ship. And he's one of those dudes. I get a feeling if we could like resurrect him and bring him out today, he could fix

what's going on in this country. Yeah, and he'd say something pithy and ask for a glass of sherry exactly. Um. So this is to me when it gets super interesting. Uh, was in the nineteenth century when westward expansion happened California gold Rush. All of a sudden, we needed to get stuff from the East coast to San Francisco, let's say,

so as quick as possible, right, what's crazy? As quick as possible was to go down New York around Florida, yes, like a steamship, uh, through the Caribbean and then across like Panama and then up on the Pacific side to California. That was the fastest way to get mail for a while. Yeah. And how long three to four weeks to send a letter from the East coast to the West coast. And that's you know, the best case scenario, right, And that's how that's what that's how the US the East coast

um communicated with the West Coast for a while. Yeah, until some stagecoach routes. Routes were um, we're established. There was a southern route and there was a central route, and the Southern route you could supposedly use a year round because it's lovely down here. But then the Central route it was faster, but they said you can't use that year round their storms. Yeah, and it also killed me. Man. The way they used to name companies back then was

so like it made perfect sense. You basically just said what you did. Like one the Pacific Mail Steamship Company said we're going to carry your mail to the Pacific by steamship, and then the Overland Mail Company like, well, we're gonna do it over land, so that's what we're gonna call our company. So they got the contract the Overland Mail Company. Um, along the Southern route. Took about twenty five days, and then my favorite, one of my

favorite parts of American history was born, the Pony Express. Yeah, and it's just so amazing, like the the idea that they had to do this. It was a different company that was competing. They wanted to get that contract away from the Overlink Company, right the CEOC and p P. And they said, you know what, we know the central route shorter. We're gonna prove that we can use a year round and we're gonna set up something that it's just gonna blow this twenty five day thing out of

the water. And they set up the Pony Express and they had stations what every ten twenty miles, and a rider would ride from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento or be part of a line of rides. Well, yeah, that's the key. They go about a hundred miles and then they change horses every like ten or fifteen miles. Yes, so the same rider would change horses because they rode. They average ten miles an hour, which doesn't sound fast, but you got a factor in like the Sierra Nevadas

where they're just crawling up these mountains. So these dudes were riding hard and on flat ground. If they're averaging ten miles an hour, right, and they're going twenty four hours a day, uh, they're going two thousand miles ten miles an hour, that's what twenty hours? Yeah, that's no, that's two hundred hours. So what is that That's less than ten days. So that's that cuts that over link company's rate by Yeah, there was always one set of

writers going east, one set going west. Yeah. I think when you when you were relieved by another rider, you'd hang out at that station and wait for the other for somebody to come the other way and then relieve them. Yeah. They were paid really well at the time five bucks a week, which at the time unskilled labors made about a dollar a week. So um, and did you read the first ad they ever put in? Wanted young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing

to risk death daily. Orphans preferred, And that's maybe legend, but supposedly that's what it says. But apparently they were young, little, light lithe, skinny kids because you know, you didn't want some big dude like me up on a horse. The horse would be like, I don't want to ride anymore. So they were like these young boys, like I think the youngest one is like fourteen. And supposedly Buffalo Bill Cody was a rider, although people have disputed that. Now.

Oh yeah, yeah, well he's he's the stuff of a legend. Well, he's by far and away the most famous famous Pony Express rider, if in fact he did. But anyway, so so think about the amount of infrastructure built up along this central route to have a station every ten or twenty miles. You've got all these employees going. And they proved it. They proved that the central route could be used year round, and so they got the contract. Then right now, the Overland Company got the contract to use it,

to use that same route that was already established. And the Pony Express was like, you have to be kidding me. And so the the U. S. Government said no, no, you guys do half and then let the let the Overland Company do the other half. Yeah, And they were mad for about a year and a half and really angry. And then the telegraph line was completed. Now everyone's like, oh, well, I guess I guess we're all out of business now. Yeah. That was it. Pony Express the soul the Wells Fargo

and basically shut down. Yeah. I think American Express ended up branching out of Wells Fargo to like these are old old companies, like these modern banks and credit card companies. Is interesting how far they go back. But think about that man. Even as far back as the mid nineteenth century, new technology was putting mail delivery out to pasture, and then mail delivery would evolve and like figure out how to come back. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Foreshadowing. So this

is a big jump forward to the mid nineteen sixties. Yeah, a lot happened in between. Then it didn't. Actually, we started to go move further and further out into the suburbs. There was a huge population boom in the in the post war era, and businesses started to realize the value of direct mailing. And all these factors put together meant that the postal Service was totally overwhelmed. Yeah, completely, because

it became such a big deal. Everyone was writing letters and they were using the same old hand um, I guess hand delivery methods, sorting methods, that's what it was. They weren't automated at all, and they needed to be. And so there was a postal reform that that was undertaken. Yeah, and this was in nineteen seventy one the Post Office Department. And I didn't even know this. It was shortly after I was born. We weren't the United States Postal Service

until nine that was when we officially became the USPS. UH, it became an independent establishment. Um was no longer a part of the cabinet of the federal government, but was part of the executive branch and got the monopoly basically to deliver mail, even though it was supposedly just a company, and they and they re up the mandate from I think Sevo that said you the postal Service is one of the most essential services of the federal government. No

person has cut off in this country. None shall not get delivered exactly. Everyone's going to have a mailbox, and everyone's going to get mail to that mailbox every day because we need to help keep intellectual freedom um going and and and ideas in business and commerce going all

the time. And the Postal Services, this federal agency that carries that out, and that I'm sure that put a financial burden on them when people started building in these especially rich people, when they started building in these remote areas, because then all of a sudden, you had to add that to your route. Well, there's if it's sixty miles up a mountain and it's the only house there's there's

a guy who services the Grand Canyon. There's a group of Indians that live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and he has a donkey train that goes down there every day with the mail. Really yeah, I mean it's part of it's a federal mandate. You have to be able to get mail. Everyone has a mailbox. He's like, don't you guys you smoke signals? Come on, they do. In fact, that actually wrote an article on spoke singles. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say we should podcasts on it, but

it's it's like super basic, is it really? It would be like a five minute podcast. Well, we'll have to figure out some other way to use it. Agreed, because that's interesting. Um, so do we cover going postal now? It was sort of just thrown in the middle of

this army. Yeah, it really was. It was talking about how packages are delivered, and all of a sudden, it says, and then people started killing each other in nine six yeah, which is actually, Um, the post Office has the dubious distinction of kicking off the workplace shooting trend in the United States. Was that the first one as far as I could tell, Alright, So Edmund Oklahoma, Patrick Henry A. Cheryl killed fourteen co workers. Um. And another one happened,

including a uh supervisor getting killed with a samurai sword. UM. November nineteen Thomas H. McIlvaine shot and killed four co workers, wounded five others, then shot himself and then nine and then in two thousand three two more incidences of postal workers killing fellow postal workers. It was like just between eighties six and nineties seven, forty people died at postal post offices from postal rampage and gave birth to the term going postal, which is used as a vernacular for

like just losing it basically, um. And if you're interested in that at all, there's a really good documentary I think it's on Netflix streaming right now called um Murdered by Proxy, and it's all about the postal shootings, like where they came from. There's a lot of scrutiny at like the of the management techniques of people at post offices, and there's got to be something to it. I mean, oh yeah, if you watch that's like it was like

how many other industries had that many office shootings? You know, retail, actually, you're the homicide rate is three times higher in retail than it is at the post office. You don't say go in retail, that just means you're going shopping. Well, it's like drinking the kool aid. They really drank flavor aid and it's right kool aids some one with that distinction. Oh yeah, alright, so that was going. Yeah, I mean we had to mention it, but I don't want to

dwell on it. But it was weird in this article the way it went right in the middle of this came up out of nowhere. Um zip codes, this is kind of cool. Um zip codes were introduced in nineteen sixty three and then officially put in place in mandatory in seven because just so much mail going on you had to categorize it more specifically, right, that was part of that, the post office being swamped. This was the

first step toward automation. Was like a standardized code. Well they did have other ones, but it was like one was New York City or something like that. You know. So ZIP this is just a nice little cocktail party factoid stands for zone improvement plan. I never knew that until I read this. Did you know that I had before?

But I had forgotten. Okay, so it's his own improvement plan and it's uh here in the United States at least, it's a five digit number represents you know, a location obviously where you're trying to send something and it now they have the ZIP code plus four in some areas of like I guess major urban areas have a little more specificity, right, they like deliver it to your like they put it on your stomach if you plus four.

I think certain buildings even will have their own plus four if it's a big enough building, or if you get a lot of mail as a person, is that what you're after is a plus four for your well, it says that some high volume mail receivers get it. I'm like, you know, if it was cool mail, I'd love to get the mail. UM. So the first digit there represents the state here in Georgia, that's a three. UM. It increases as you move west, and there are some

states that share each digit. Yeah, like two. Yeah, it's taken up by a lot of states. There's the District of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia. Man all two's. I would be mad if I lived in one of those states. So then you got the second third digits. Those are regions within the state. UM. The first three of those create what's called the SCF code, the sectional center, facility, and UM. Then the fourth and

fifth digits are even more specific. Basically, it just hones down as you go left or right until you've got Josh Clark's house right, like this state, this section facility, this UM post office, yeah, this neighborhood yeah, and then this maybe this building, this high volume mail receiver named Josh Clark. That's right. Um, So you've got the zip code that allowed automation. And a little known fact is the US Postal Service doesn't just handle a ton of the US as mail. It handles of all of the

mail in the world. Really yeah wow, So before the zip code, this was really difficult. It also went from if you're mailing something from New York to San Francisco, it went through every distribution facility in the country in between New York and San Francisco. Um before it got there. Really yes, Now zip codes, Well, let's talk about how what a letter does, and this is all thanks to zip codes. So I write a little love letter, I'm gonna mail it to Emily, which is weird because we

live together. Just be a romantic. That's actually a great example though, because you can mail something from your mailbox to be delivered back to you. I reckon, I've never done it. That's a that's a the poor man's trademark I've heard about that is to mail something to yourself into this. I think it depends on the judge. Yeah. Probably. Okay, So you put it in your mailbox. Postal carriers gonna

pick it up. They're gonna take it to the post office. Um, they're gonna put it on a truck and then take that from the post office to a processing plant where we have our long awaited machines doing some sorting, shape and size. Yeah. Well, first they sort everything out and make sure everything's facing the right way up right. Um. And then the the they packages, well, packages are put on one one belt and then letters are put in another. And there the letters say, let's just stick with the

letter that you wrote. Okay. Uh it's it goes into a slot so it's facing upwards and upright. Yeah if if front words and upright. And then they put a little barcode on the back of the letter and uh I think ultra violet ink. Yeah. Well, first thing it does is it gets a postmark and cancelation line saying basically, you can't use the stamp again. Yeah. Don't even try it. Don't be cheap. We've seen the wide out tricks. We've seen doctoring up a stamp, which is probably a federal offense.

It probably is UM. And then so after that the barcodes in it on the back of the piece of mail. And then there's an optical scanner that reads the address, which is pretty cool. And if you if they're really really really accurate to UM, but if your handwriting is terrible, they have a new system now where the this UM conveyor belt takes a picture of it, send emails a picture to a human being at a computer who reads it what I think it is, types it in and

then it's so it stays on the line. It doesn't have to come out any longer. It's pretty much technology. Yeah. UM. And then so based on this UM this address, including the ZIP code, it prints a barcode at the bottom. If you look at a letter, any letter you get has a little barcode on it. And so that's what's red. That's right that the thing on the back is invisible. I think right, it's fluorescent. That's just showing off. We

have invisible link. Other processing machines then read those barcodes and then sort them in their little bins according to zip code. And it's just basically placing everything and what will eventually be a trade that will be delivered back to a post office or a sorting facility or does it go straight to a post office? UM, it goes to another processing plant, right, So imagine each processing plant regional I guess, has a bunch of mail coming in

on trucks. Then it sorts and then sends out and then based on its zip code that it serves UM, it gets a bunch of flats from other UM distribution facilities that's right with that are already according to the zip code. So let's say it's getting a flat of mail by zip code. It then also sorts through those that's right, and it actually sorts them into an individual carriers route in order, and that's what's delivered to the post office. So it arrives at the post office ready

to go on the truck. Yes, okay, And that doesn't mean that the postal worker doesn't have much to do. They also still have like circulars, magazines, bulk mail. They have to go through and put it for every address, all that crapped it and where all that my recycling ben basically yeah, although the coupons. I'll remember our junk mail episode from years and years back, and we've got so much from people who are like, no, no, no, you can't get rid of junk mail, right, that's the

only thing keeping us in business. So if you're going to address a letter, there are a few guidelines. You know. You gotta put your address legibly on the front. You gotta put your little return address in the upper left corner. Yeah, on the front, don't put it on the back, upper left corner there. And don't use periods in commas, like if you write p O box it's not p period

oh period, Although that doesn't matter. Apparently it allows for greater efficiency in reading your letter, maybe because I always put like Atlanta comma g A period. I do too, and they still get there. But don't you wonder if they get there like earlier? I don't know. Maybe, so uh it is um, Supposedly you need to be able to read the address at arms length, so don't write tiny, and uh, don't write so big that they can't do other things to the envelope like scan and stamp and

things like that. Um. And then you know, you gotta put your return address because if something happens, you want it to come back to you. Although I don't do that much anymore, A lot of times I'll just put like Atlanta, Georgia. Really, you don't put your return address on there. No, but I rarely mail things, and a lot of times when I do, it's for work, So I'll just put, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, houstaff works or something. And it's not the kind of thing that if it

doesn't come back to me, I would care. I got I've had some precious thing. I would put a Richard address. I have a feeling that you're going to get some email from postal carriers that are like I hate people like you, because whether you care if it comes back to you or not, I'm sure they have to get it back to you. Uh. There's a lot of type

of delivery surfaces we surfaces services. We won't go over here, but I did want to say that media mail is a great little ah trick, not a trick, but a great tool if you're mailing things like books and or DVDs because it's super cheap, but it takes a while.

But that's part of that mandate from that. They want to keep the intellectual juice of America flowing through the Postal Service, so things like that creative stuff for books or correspondence, like and I think that's how if you've ever ordered a book on Amazon for like two cents, you're like, oh, how can they sell a book for two cents, It's because they charge you like four for shipping, and they probably pay like eight cents to mail it with media mail. That's the greatest scam of the century.

Well not really, I mean they're making their money via shipping instead of the book itself. But publishers don't like it, of course, because they want to sell their books new and not for two cents on Amazon. So. Um, I think we said that the Postal Service has a monopoly on delivering mail but not on delivering packages, right, Um, so because they're kind of in competitive business against like

UPS and FedEx and d h L and all those guys. Um, those guys have gone ahead and in and invested in infrastructure of say like air delivery, air transportation of mail, and the U. The Postal Service has tried that before, like they tried a guided missile in ninety three, which they shot full of mail from a submarine to a naval station in Florida, but it was just too expensive. So the Postal Service said, hey, Ups, Hey FedEx, you guys have a bunch of planes. Can we start putting

our mail on it? And they said sure for a few billion dollars a year. And the Postal Service said great. But at the same time they kind of, um, they stepped forward into the twenty first century by doing so. And the Postal Service, having access to everyone's mailbox, is often tapped by UPS and FedEx deliver what's called in

the business the last mile. Yeah. So a lot of times, especially if you're a rural person, if you get something from Amazon, it's it was shipped by UPS, but eventually it made its way into your postal carriers route and being delivered by the Postal Service. Yeah, there's way more mixing of package mailing than you would think. Um, it's

like a swinger party or something pretty much. Uh. And part of that deal in two thousand one with FedEx was, Hey, FedEx said, can we put our boxes at your post offices? And they said sure for six million dollars And they said, you know, can we hit your ride on your plane. They said, sure, for six point three billions over seven years. But it's you know, seems like a good agreement. And they did the same with ups and uh we scratch our back, you scratch yours, we scratch your back, we'll

scratch yours. That works. Yeah, why didn't everybody scratch them back? I don't know. Okay, um, because it's hard to reach. Uh So, if you realize that the postal service needs a few billion extra dollars, you say, why are you just up the postal rates? Yeah, well, the federal government keeps its thumb on that they want to make sure that anybody who needs to mail a letter can do so without great expense. Yeah, it's a big deal to

change the postal rate. Like it is, much more than you would think, because a layman like me would just be like, yeah, I just add a few cents. Who cares. Yeah, it's the problem just printing those forever stance genius idea. You don't have to go back and reprint a bunch with the amount great idea or the one cent. Remember in Fargo, Yeah, when the Wade got the one center with the ducks. Yeah, and she was like everyone needs the once sent whenever they raise the rates. Yeah, he's like, cool, Gee,

I didn't think about that. Um so, but yes, there's a very long, protracted, difficult process of raising the postal rates. It's not a very easy thing and it involves a ton of bureaucracy. Should we get into that or just leave it at that? It's up to you, man, I think we should just leave it at that. Okay. So if you are going to mail something from your house, you need your little mailbox, and I just installed mine in what seemed like a sensible manner. I didn't realize

that there were actual rules. Um. In fact, you were supposed to contact the post office before installing your mailbox, which I had no idea. UM, to make sure it's like the correct placement and height and so like the post office person or the mail career, I don't have to get out of the truck. Oh well they'll they'll burn it down if it's not the specification. So you

want to contact the post office? I didn't, but I guess I just lucked out because, um they say generally in from the road surface to the inside floor of the mailbox or point of entry, and then set back six to eight inches from the front face of the curb or road edge to the mailbox door. I guess I just got lucky then, because I get my mail, you know, without any burning down over here now or without a post office spots box, which we talked about.

They've been around for a couple of hundred years. And that's if you want to have a little key to your little loan box in a post office and get your mail there, you can certainly do that. It's handy if you're starting out of business and you want to make people think that you're not working out of your house. Um, you can get a post office and say, look, I have a PO box, which means I'm working out of my bedroom. It's like code, I think, are you getting

guns in the mail? Is that what people do? I'm sure there's a lot of people who try to get guns in the mail in the p O boxes. Yeah sure, okay. Or if you um tend to move around a lot in the same town and you don't want to worry about changing your mail and forwarding mail, you could always just get a PO box. Yeah. So those are some reasons. Um, you want to talk the future of the post office if it's around after October two. What is the future of the post Office. Well, there's a lot of stuff

coming down the pike. Um, there's the cancelation of Saturday mail this August. They're really going hard after package delivery services. Now what trying to oh with like the flat rates and stuff like that. Just really like courting businesses to say, hey, consider us instead of ups or FedEx um and uh, especially with prescription medicines because we have an aging population is going to do nothing but increase in size, so you're gonna need more prescriptions through the mail. So hey,

let's get into that. Yeah, and you can get stuff like that certified and insured and uh, signature delivery approved and stuff like that. It's helpful. Part of the post office is pledged that your letter carrier won't take your medication before delivering it might hit you up for something, right. Um. But there's also a line of clothing coming out postal service. Line of clothing coming out, I'm not kidding, called rain,

heat or snow. And as we almost didn't mention this, so the Postal Services creed right, neither rain nor snow, nor sleep, sleep nor holland rain or sleep nor snow, nor neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these carriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. And that's actually not the post Office's official model. They don't have one, but it's been linked to them.

And it's actually an adaptation of something from Herodotus, the Greek historian, who was making a comment about how the Persians, even during their war and like five b c. They were one of the first ones to establish a real postal service, and even during war, the postal service didn't stop. They were still documents being delivered, and Herodotus was commenting on that, and that's where that came from. It should include like or loss of limb. It did originally, Like

that's an adaptation. It wasn't loss of limb, but it was something like some sort of sicknesses befalling you. They were putting the mail before themselves. The show must go on, right. Um. So there's a line of clothing called the rain or heat or snow um and then um. They're also talking about creating federal email addresses that you get at birth.

Just like you have a physical address, you would also have an email address, but your email address is attached to you rather than the physical location you live at. And if you say need to correspond with the I R S Or Social Security Administration something like that, you would send like this very secure email through this Postal Services portal. Everything else you could just use like you know, Gmail or Yahoo or whatever for everyday stuff. But this

is like the big stuff, the really important stuff. And then the postal service would also offer like a digital lock box for um, the like like a will or your medical records or something like that. Yeah, and listen, is every conspiracy uh person in the country now says in a way, I want a federal email attached to my name that I have to send things through. Yeah, well that's the number of the Beast. Obviously, I don't know that I would want that either. And I'm not

a big conspiracy guy. Oh, it's not that you have to send it through that. It's that if you send it through that, if somebody hijacks that er reads it, you're going to be in a lot more trouble federally speaking than they would be if like they read your Gmail. Because didn't it illegal to to open like a federal

offense to get someone's exactly? And that's what this there's this guy who runs a think tank for the Postal Service who's who's like, it's not just about mailing documents, it's about protecting the connectedness of the United States and Americans, So how do we do that in a digital world? He's thinking about this. So if you're even the least bit interested by this episode that we just recorded, Um, there's an Esquire article called too I did, there's ae do.

It's called do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office? And it's by Jesse Lichtenstein, And um, it is really good, man. It's a really good overview of what does Jesse think, Uh, we need he or she I think kind of leans toward we need it. And the more you start to read about it, the more this weird kind of civic affection for the post office developed. And you know where I'm like, yeah, we don't want to get rid of the post office. You want the

post office? Who doesn't want the post office? It's kind of it kind of develops. Yeah, I used to like, you know, maybe it was a simpler day, or maybe the people stuck with their routes longer, But I remember my postman growing up. It was the same guy for years, and we lived on We didn't live in a neighborhood.

We lived on a street in the woods with like six houses, and so you know, I would run out and check the mail and wave at them, and we would give him like gifts at Christmas and that's awesome. And now I have no idea who my postal curious? Which is my fault? I need to just go out there, I think you do. Yeah. And also the postal services responsible for the largest food drive in the United States every year. Yeah, you know that food drive where you like you just put like canned food in your in

your mailbox, in your postal you can do that. Yeah, I've never heard of. It hasn't been very well publicized, but it's like at least around here, I guess. But um, it's a huge food drive or at the very least, postal carriers are taking and eating cans of viol for dinner like this is delicious. I love this food drive. Yes, I don't just put cans of food in your mailbox. Check in too when that is supposed to That's got to be the worst day of the year for letter carrier,

my gosh. Yeah, can you imagine it's a lot of weight. Yeah, Um, you got anything else? No respect your post postal carrier? You want everybody go out and meet their postal carry? Yeah, why not give him a hug? Actually, don't do that, they might make you or something. Yeah, but give him a wave. Um. If you want to learn more about the post office, you can type that word those words into the search bar house to works dot com and uh be sure to check out the Esquire article too.

It's very cool. Um and uh, I guess before we get into that, chuck, you want a message from our sponsor, let's do that. Yeah, Uh okay, now it's listener mel Josh, I'm gonna call this uh um fan who thought we were wrong and did a little research and we may not be wrong after call. Oh, yeah, that's a nice.

We had a bunch of filmmakers right in when we talked about the um subliminal messages being inserted into movies in the nineteen fifties by James Vickery, because we said it's one three thousand of a second or something, and a bunch of filmmakers went, there's only twenty four frames per second, so if you switched out one frame, it would only be there's no way, there's no way. And where'd you get this number? Where'd you get this number? I went back and looked, and I was like, I mean,

I see this number in various places. But um so, we got this email from Brian Henry that disputed this, and then he wrote back with this, Hey, guys, looks like a may I have've spoken too soon. I was assuming that Vickery was just changing the film itself, which were dissolved in the messages showing much slower in at the maximum the second. But I did some research and apparently he used something called a uh I've never heard this before, a tachi stato scope tacha stop to to

just the scope. I think you got it to just the scope okay, to project the messages on the screen, not the movie projector. He said, so this way he would have had a lot more control over the speed of the messages. And um So, to all the filmmakers out there who wrote in and challenged us boom, I wrote back to a few that was like, jeez, I

don't know, man, I'm like, I'm looking for it. Then they you know someone we're even kind of snotty about, like the should research the more so, apparently put that in your tits, gope and smoke it. That's what I say. And that is from Brian Henry. Yeah. Thanks for the research you know, and being a good guy saying hey, I was wrong because you were wrong. He was. He

was one of the nicer ones about it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Um, if you want to let us know that you were wrong, even though you had told us that we were wrong at first, we love those um you can tweet that to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, or you can send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know

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