Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - U.S. Post Offices

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian Caitlin Gill (TruTV, SF Punchline) and comedy podcaster/writer Andrew Ti (Yo Is This Racist?, 'mixed-ish') for a look at why U.S. Post Offices are secretly incredibly fascinating.  This is one of two episodes released on our Super Double Premiere Day! Find the other episode ("Cattle") in this podcast feed. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episodes.

U.S. post offices. Known for letters and packages. Famous for letters and packages and waiting in line. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why U.S. post to a whole new podcast. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt. I'm also known as Schmitty the Clam. I'm also known as Schmitty the Champ. And I am also, also kind of doing a different intro for this episode than other episodes will have, because it's a brand new podcast. You need

to know stuff about it. And it's also, I think, a pretty self-explanatory podcast. It's called Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. And each episode brings you the stories, facts, and big takeaways about one everyday thing that make that thing actually the podcast title. You get it. You understand. Great. Every episode is focused on the most exciting stories and facts and research. So we won't say every single thing that's ever been said about the topic, but we're going to research everything we talk about. And I'm the kind of person who loves trivia, who has publicly won some trivia contests in the form of Jeopardy four times. And I think I have a nose for this kind of story, in fact, another thing that you'll want to hear about. Also, every episode has at least one fantastic guest, and I am joined by two of them on this one.

I hope you've already enjoyed the comedy and writing and more of Caitlin Gill and Andrew T. In case you haven't, Caitlin Gill is a phenomenal stand-up comedian. Her latest album is entitled Major. It's recorded live at the world-famous San Francisco Punchline. It's available everywhere and links are at caitlingillcomedy.com. And Andrew T. is a television comedy writer on shows like Mixed-ish on ABC, also a podcasting titan as the longtime host and co-host of Yo! Is This Racist on Earwolf. Search the name in your podcast app. There you go. Those are today's guests. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples, and acknowledge Caitlin and Andrew each recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples, and

acknowledge Caitlin and Andrew each recorded this on the traditional land of the Keech and Chumash peoples. That is a new practice for me, and I think that feels worth doing on each episode of this podcast. Also, as you will hear toward the middle, it's extra relevant to this particular episode and topic. We'll get into that. Beyond that, you'll also hear the basic format of this podcast. You'll hear a ton of research. Source links for that are at our website, sifpod.fun, and you'll hear a heck of a lot of fun along the way, if I don't say so myself and point to the top-level domain.fun that you can just put on a website. Anyway, let's get to it. Please sit back or keep standing in line at the post office, because the wait is worth it and the workers are like holding the country together. Good for them.

And either way, here's this world premiere episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with guests Caitlin Gill and Andrew T. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then Andrew, Caitlin thank you so much for the new frontier of this, we're doing it, it's very exciting yes we're doing it, we're all here in the exact same room sitting about 18 inches apart

yeah I got this new thing I do where I sniff everybody's mouths We're all here in the exact same room, sitting about 18 inches apart. Yeah, I got this new thing I do where I sniff everybody's mouths. It's this thing that I've gotten into lately. Pretty cool. I'm like ahead of the trend. So I'm just trying to break ground on that. That's been going pretty good. No, just kidding.

I haven't made contact with a stranger in months and months and months. So it's really good to see the both of you. Hi, virtually. We're not in the same room. Nobody's been in the same room with anybody for a long time, which is a very dated way to start a podcast. But hey, let's anchor it. This is where we are in space and time. It's going to be so funny when somebody in the after finds this podcast in 2023

and after three years of building an amazing library and a huge, huge legion of fans, someone new is going to be like, you know what? I'm going to start at the beginning and just be instantly thrust back into the memories of the before, of the during, I should say. There's the before, the during, and then the after. We're all conjecturing on what the after will be and when. But I don't know. Are you like on the road or are you like thinking it's going to go great? Who knows?

Oh, God. Well, that's all that's all very true. And no matter when people are listening to this, maybe they would like to be transported to a joyful world of fun things about post offices. And all of these episodes are going to start with, hey, the guests, what is your relationship to this topic? So, Andrew, Caitlin, both of you, like, how do you feel about the post office what's it been in your life i was just gonna say i was wrong i had been misled i feel i feel like i bought into hype about the post office just being all lions and and a chore in your day and it took until i was a seasoned adult to realize what a miraculous service it is and what an incredible like idea it is. And such a commitment to a neat ideal that,

yeah, I'm still curious about why they had such an odd bad rep culturally, but it's, I, yeah, I went from being buying into the cultural hype about the post office being sort of a chore, excuse me,

or a line you avoid, but I am now wholeheartedly pro-post office and very impressed with what they do. Yeah. This is going to age me significantly, but I used to write a paper zine when I was in high school. I love it. Little, you know, go to Kinko's,

put together 18 pages of pure, horrible and send it i'm not i will say my my high school girlfriend was the one who made most of the connections but i guess it was just through addresses and other zines we would write to people send them the zine we kind of became friends that way i mean sort of all the function of of TikTok, but it just would take two weeks to leave a comment. So that was my teens. But so I was in the post office every other day in high school. I would go constantly. And then I realized our main thing that we did was in an attempt to defraud the post office. I mean, because we were in high school, we were relatively poor. And like stamps was like becoming a major cost center in the zine production business because we had no revenue.

So we're trying not to spend money on stamps so what we would do is when we sent zines to other zine people we would cover the surface of the stamp i'm sort of miming it on the zoom chat right now with um with with water soluble glue with the idea that the postmark on top of that stamp would would um rest on the glue and then later on that glue could be washed off along with the postmark and the stamp could thus be reused dang yeah and so you'd get you'd get like three or four uses out of a stamp it was crazy crazy that we did this. In retrospect, horrible. It's good that I started

this podcast to sting criminals because the police will be coming in momentarily. That's like for sure a federal crime I just described. Like, that's like mail fraud. And like, you know, stamps are legal tender.

Anyway, we would do this like routinely. I love how innocent, creative and productive your mail fraud was. I literally just stole mail out of mailboxes because I had no idea of consequence or inconvenience. I was a monster, as all children are before their brains form. It's not their fault. It's just biology. They don't understand that people need those bills. But yeah, that's a very charming and

creative way to defraud the post office. Not little Tasmanian devil running around stealing mail in a posh neighborhood. It was a nice neighborhood. So in that sense, like, eat the rich, whatever. F*** their mail. But I am... I do apologize to whoever's mail I stole in 1992.

Yeah. Anyway, so I like the post office because I've stolen upwards of four to five dollars worth of postage from them, I would say would say right just doing the math and spending so much time in line too like that's very charming to me yeah i don't know in high school money that's a whole week's wages so that is yeah i mean that's significant savings no no

as a percentage as a percentage yeah it was. But in retrospect, it's just lunacy. And then I got email and that whole hustle just instantly disappeared. So I have to move on to other frauds, which I will not be confessing to. Don't worry. There's a whole world of fraud awaiting you. I do feel like the post office loomed large in my life growing up, but also have never really known much about it. And we're going to get into a couple of ways the post office is secretly incredibly fascinating. And to start off, we're going to talk about a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics about the post office in a segment called Gimme Them Digits. Also, since this is the first week of the show,

that name was submitted by me. We're going to have a new name for this segment every week submitted by listeners like you. And I want them to be as silly and wacky as possible. The less good, the better. Submit your name for the numbers and statistics segment to at SifPod on Twitter or SifPod at gmail.com, please. I want worse stuff than, give me them digits. I want it, so please send it. I think you've set the bar so high. I don't know that that will be ever beat.

No worse names. I don't know. That's pretty bad. Oh, yeah. You got, like... Oh! You got, like... I can't get no satisfaction.

Oh! Oh, that one hurt. My head. We can do this. We can do this. Count me in. Huh? Huh?

Huh? Because also, if the name is song lyric related, I will almost definitely sing it. So you can do that to me. We can set it up. It's great. definitely sing it. So you can do that to me. We can set it up. It's great. 8-6-7-5-3-0-9 and other numbers.

Clipping these out hastily in audition. Okay. So we've got a lot of stats here and a lot of them are coming from facts.usps.com because the USPS is just put together like a whole list of crazy things. And there are currently 31,322 retail US post offices in the country. So over 31,000 post offices going on. There are also about 60,000 other businesses that sell stamps. There's also over 1,000 military post offices. There's 678 of them on land and 389 post offices that are on ships. Did you know that? We have like a bunch of aircraft carriers and stuff that have their own post offices

all the time. It's great. That's wild. Imagine that postal route. You got a little bag. You're like all tipping with the waves. Just going around to different bunks. Giving a letter to a dolphin. It is like kind of mildly mind bending to think that the post office could move like it has an address and a zip code, presumably. Yeah.

But it can move. I guess that's the whole thing. It costs the same to send it wherever. So, you know, first class mail is first class mail. And so much of that is in the stories here, too. It's gonna be great. There's also another. Yeah, sorry. It's awesome. I said the one thing I knew. Yeah, it's awesome. Please go ahead. There's also another mind bending thing here. There are 141,900 blue mailboxes in the country, right? Because that's another place to put your letters. And if you laid them end to end, they would be 58 miles long.

So that's just going on. We could build like a giant, you know, state border size thing of mailboxes if we wanted to. That's less than I thought, I got to say. I feel like there's so many of them everywhere. 58 miles doesn't seem like that much. Maybe it is. It is.

What am I talking about? They're weirdly everywhere. Like, I feel like I see one and I'm like, they have to do this one too every day. And they do. They're just always doing it. Yeah, that's the thing. They're very well, they're strategically well placed. That is a feat in civic planning in and of itself that, like, I never have felt too far away from a blue post box.

Like I could be wrong. I'm sure there's someone out there listening who's like, I have to walk 25 miles in the snow both ways and my shoes stay at home. I'm barefoot walking to get to the post office or postal box. But in my experience, town's big and small. If you look hard enough, you're going to see that little blue box somewhere. And also with the post offices themselves, we've got stats on the biggest and smallest ones. The biggest U.S. post office is 393,000 square feet. It's the James A. Farley Post Office in New York, New York, 1001.

It's the giant one in Manhattan that I think people have walked past. It's a building that takes up two entire Manhattan blocks. It goes from 9th all the way to 8th Avenue and then just wipes out 32nd Street. There is no 32nd Street there. It's just a post office. And it's also got a famous motto chiseled on the top of the building. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds and that's not actually official usps uh motto or or meaning or anything just an architect picked it and kind of stuck it on the whole service they're just stuck with it that's like it's like that's like basically the green lantern speech and it's just it is well i it's like a from it's just from that era where like you could like say like you know what like four kind of insane couplets about what your job is and that

was like fine like this is how we do it puff your chest out stand up straight say say your and then that's that's like part of a job everyone had it everyone had it it does also mean that for centuries that's what it's taken to justify labor is that big sense of like we are the ones who will never be dashed in our attempts to valet these cars. We shall, under threat of all parking lot heat and all parallel parking necessary, nothing shall keep us from jogging to your car efficiently. Like, there's some seal. It's also, the weirdest thing about the era it's from

is that, I'm sure it was some 20th century translator, but the quote is coming from the ancient historian Herodotus, who was writing about like the Greek city-states fighting the Persians. And so that quote is him describing Persian messengers 2,500 years ago. Oh, hell yeah. That's what he thought about them at the time. So the bad guys from 300, the kind of oriental terrifying weenies, had a good ass post office. Well, now this explains the right wing antipathy towards them. This is all kind of coming together. And it's actually, it is an interesting thing to reflect on recently with the way the post office has been politicized.

That we see evidence of what it's like when you privatize these kind of deliveries sort of all around us. I feel like we're deep enough in now that I can say my mother lived in Mexico for a great number of years. And like that meant that postal couriers in two countries were pretty responsible for keeping us connected between those were the calling card days, pre cell phone days, the true before. So yeah, it always meant a lot. And actually, that reminds yeah, it always meant a lot. That reminds me, I think my main interesting story about my relationship with the post office is that I was in Hawaii in normal times and I was sending a letter back to the States and I argued with the guy about it

only costing one stamp. I was like, no, you're wrong. Obviously, we're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Surely it costs more for some reason. And he was like, no, it's just the same. Andrew, when you were making zines and when I was getting letters from my mom, it's like, that's the way we communicated with the world. And we kind of, when email hit, that offered a new way to like stay in touch.

But the sweet, I think we've learned in the last 20 years, like it's still so incredible. Like there's no replacing the value of having somebody come to your house every day to take the things that you need to deliver somewhere else. Like, we found all the other ways that the post office is important. Beyond the sentiment, like, it's so great we can stay connected with our FaceTimes, our Zooms, our emails. But the need for that system has not dissipated, which I think is kind of neat. That's neat. That's the vibe I bring. Neato. That's special. But you were giving facts and figures, and I have now dipped into personal anecdote corner, which is a whole different

side of a podcast. Give me more digis. Tell me the num-nums. Oh, my God. I love it. We've got the smallest U.S. post office here, the smallest one in the entire country, out of over 30,000 of them. It is in Ochopee, Florida, 34141. And it is 56 square feet. So it's like seven feet by eight feet is the entire size of the post office. So a studio apartment in either Los Angeles or New York. Just about. It's a shower.

Over on Patreon, we will have pictures of this tiny, cute hut. It's basically like a Snoopy's doghouse with one guy in it. And it's in the big cypress swamp of South Florida. Also, there's a picture from RoadsideAmerica.com where somebody visited it in 2015, and it was painted pink for breast cancer awareness, which is wonderful. But so the entire thing is a Snoopy dog house that's pink and is also somehow a post office. My heart goes out to the carriers that just like got a new spot on the map that they had to deliver to because some intrepid soul decided they needed to live

in a swamp. And there's just like a whole like train of people now that are just like oh man like i get it i'm gonna deliver your mail every day but i gotta go where i gotta get a fan boat to do what what percentage of the um material going in and out of that post office do you think is bullets and coke do you think think it's... You know what? I have to do this every time I throw Florida under the national bus. The only reason we know Florida is so weird is because their sunshine laws are so pervasive.

Like, the media can get hold of all police records, which means it's an easy thing to report. When something weird happens, it's much harder to get records in other states, especially quickly, so, like, we don't know the weird stuff that's happening in Montana, and that's why everybody bags on Florida.

So thank you, Florida, for all of your access to your public information, but I will continue to bag on you because your stories are hilarious. I just mean to say that everybody's eating faces off with basalts all over the country. It's just that Florida's media can get it faster than other places, so the stories stay hotter. An endless fountain of news. That's so great. Well, and two more numbers here before we get into the first big takeaway. One of them is 10,578 feet above sea level, which is the post

office in Alma, Colorado, 80420. It's the highest post office in the United States, 10,578 feet, which is literally more than two miles up in the air above sea level. It's 18 more feet than that. Well, yeah. That's cheating. That's just, that's not even a, you can't enter a competition if you're right. That's not, come on. Of course it is.

And then the lowest one is negative 282 feet above sea level because it's in Death Valley, California. Nine, two, three, two, eight. I guess, oh man, it is wild to think about any part of California being below sea level. I guess we will be an island eventually or a peninsula, but Jesus Christ. Well, and that's Death Valley's thing. Also, their post office is apparently the hottest and driest post office in the country. It's just this place that is unfathomably low and weird and hot.

Oh, the death one. The one where you die if you go into it for too long. That one. What kind of valley? Oh, yes. Quite low and hot. At least it didn't go, like, it didn't try to hide. Death Valley didn't go with, like, come on over here, valley. Nothing

goes wrong in this valley, valley. It really just went right out and was like, hey, heads up. Just so you know, that's the Death Valley. Nothing goes wrong in this Valley Valley. It really just went right out and was like, hey, heads up. Just so you know, that's the Death Valley. And that is Gimme Them Digits. We got the digits. We did it. Which brings us into takeaway number one about why the post office is secretly incredibly fascinating. There are tons of strange and cool and unique post offices, like the numerical ones we did. But there's like a bunch more here that I feel like people should be excited about how specific and strange a post office can be in the U.S. And the first one here is that there is a Grand Canyon post office that receives and sends its mail by mule. It's just a mule train bringing it up and down in and out of the Grand Canyon, almost like, you know, the trip of someone's life.

They just do this with the mail every day. It's amazing. Is that like bottom of the Grand Canyon? Yeah, there's a like tributary canyon directly on the Grand Canyon where the Havasupai people are a Native American tribe. And after litigation and negotiating with the government, they got back some of their traditional land at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And so the town of Supai, Arizona, 86435, population 208, is the capital of the reservation and then has its own post office. And so it takes mules to bring the mail down and then back up from this town.

And that's just the thing going on. It's a thing where we don't know exactly when they started doing the mule thing. The first photos of it are in 1938. I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Like the mules have been getting it there. Why? What are we going to do, a helicopter? Just stick with the mules.

Yeah. That's amazing. And then the process starts with a truck picking up mail in Peach Springs, Arizona, and then driving at 60 miles to a hilltop where then mules carry at eight miles down to the town. And it takes them three hours to go down and five hours to come back up. And most of the mail is food because there's no grocery store in the town. So that's most of the mail they're receiving along with medicine and small appliances. then a few letters and magazines from there I guess if you keep your fingers crossed

for a route, you know, that's a gem to catch I wonder how long you have to deliver at tract houses that all look exactly the same before they're like, you know what you get the mules you get to do the mules you gotta drive the car for the job that you want.

There you go. Mule. You know what, Andrew? I was inside the box. And thank you. I'm climbing right out of it. Any mail route can be a mule mail route. Yeah.

Ride the mule you want to see in the world. Yeah. I guess the budgets just work the same way. It's just you just get hay instead of gasoline for the car, mail truck. Yeah. Yeah. It's just you just get like hay instead of gasoline for the car, mail truck. Yeah. Yeah, it's a whole train of them. And they also have like a fun postmark with a bunch of mules drawn on it.

And just the whole thing depends on this very specific and nice service that like keeps the whole town going. It's amazing. Man, my parents have had the same mail person for, I don't know, I'm old. A lot of years. For her sake, I'll put

it at 25, but I think it's north of that. But I would be endlessly impressed if instead of looking out one day and seeing her familiar tiny truck, it was just like two mules. Just chilling. Her mule and the stuffed mule. And she just took it on down

the road. Man, what a step up, you know, what a what a glow up, I guess I think the kids say. I don't know who like anyone else in my life, I might be concerned if they showed up with the mule instead of their car. But man, our mail lady, that would be so boss. Yeah. And rules. man, our mail lady, that would be so boss. Yeah, f***ing rules. Yeah, I almost hate to depart them to the next post office, but we have one here that is a secret Manhattan gemstone post office. What that means is it's a post office called the Appraiser's Store's Post Office that's in a tower on Fifth Avenue near 47th Street in Manhattan.

And I sent you guys a picture of the outside of the building. And you might notice that there are no signs. And there's no markings that it's a post office in there. It's completely secret that on the fourth floor of this building, there's one door that takes you into a post office. And Adam Sandler outside clawing at the doors. Yeah. And the reason it's secret is this is the heart of New York's Diamond District.

And so for a long time, the merchants have requested and the post office has provided an office that is totally secret, except that you can Google it. But you can't see it from the street. And it only accepts registered mail and only deals with heavily privately insured shipments of jewels and gemstones and diamonds and things. And if you want to enter the post office, if you get there, they do an ID scan and a fingerprinting thing and a whole bunch of very comprehensive security. I've played just enough Red Dead Redemption 2 to say that that is a very good idea. Especially when the cranky mail carrier from the you know the big city mail carrier has to team up with the mule carrier to solve a diamond crime in the grand canyon it's just oh i

was gonna say conspire to steal the jewels again eat the rich take what let's go robin hood mail people if you if you could get those diamonds on them mules, this is the perfect crime. The perfect crime. Jewel mule, yeah, sure. See, I know that you mean like the mules carrying diamonds in a bag, but I went straight to just like mules heavily adorned with jewels.

Oh! Like, you know, sick earrings and like a big brooch and like a lovely pendant and you know, yeah, just big brooch and, like, a lovely pendant and, you know. Yeah, just really looks. Servant looks. I thought you were talking about a mule swallowing a condom full of diamonds and then. No, there is another way mules could carry things for you, but it wasn't what I was referencing in this.

That's a person mule. That is a different kind of mule. I don't know the difference. And I am looking for a job, if anybody is unrelated. Well, another thing that there's a whole post office for, this is the remote Hawaiian post office that mails coconuts nationwide.

It's in the town of Ho'olehua, Hawaii, 96729 on the island of Molokai, which is like the fifth biggest Hawaiian island, which means like there are the top four are the ones that all the tourists go to and there's a whole tourism industry. And then Molokai is less than 10,000 people, mostly farming, very little tourism.

But the number one thing on TripAdvisor for the entire island of Molokai is the Ho'olehua post office, where you can get a free coconut and pay $11 to $16 in postage, write anything you want on it, and mail it to people anywhere in the country. Oh, right. Because the coconut's just grow outside or nearby, presumably. And the money's in the weight of the coconut. Yeah, exactly. That is amazing. That makes sense.

I would be so delighted. I also am the monster who did not think of any, like, I didn't think of sending this to a friend, but to myself. 100%, I am buying this for me. This is the only child coming truly alive in me. Where, like, so I got to go to this cool place and now I'm going to ship it back. And when I get home, I'll be like, my coconut. Like, I definitely went to an uncharitable place really fast. Be like, this is mine.

That's what I'd write on my coconut. My coconut. And then send it to myself. Just rules. I would probably do the same thing, honestly. rules. I would probably do the same thing, honestly. I would honestly probably just send it to, like, whatever hotel

on whatever other island I'm staying at and just have it. Probably eat it. Probably eat it in the next couple days. Yeah, it's true. I do, you know, my intention is to consume the coconut, I presume. Yeah, it's like snack mail. I don't know. Yeah, and they've mailed more than 50,000 coconuts since 1991.

It's called Post-A-Nut. And we'll have a picture on the Patreon. It looks like they just give people a bunch of colored Sharpies and let them go nuts on them before they send them. It's very fun. I guess it makes sense that it's the post office. It didn't really like, who else would it be? Like, why not?

That's exactly the kind of tourist dick that's going to get me through the door. So if there are any tourism advisor consultants out there, know that if you're looking for the 39-year-old gay lady demo, yep, you got me with Post-it Nut. I'm in. You got me. It just feels like this scheme should be replicated other places. There's a lot of foods, a lot of foods and a lot of things you could mail.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of a lot of growing. Get on it. Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend

his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more

is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace. Because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And remember, no running in the halls.

One more strange, awesome post office here. This is a post office that is in Michigan, and it is a boat, and it is its own zip code. So just this boat is an entire zip code. It's called JW Westcott 2, and this boat is based out of Detroit, and it is the zip code 48222. There are more than 41,000 zip codes in the U.S. This is the only one that is floating and just a boat because this boat delivers mail to freighters on the Great Lakes that tend not to do a lot of docking. So as you go through the Detroit River,

this boat will loft your mail to you with ropes and buckets. And it's its own zip code. It's just the whole thing. Like it looks like a little tugboat in the pictures. Like it's not a very big boat, but it's an entire zip code. What a sweet come to life version of a yo mama joke. That is the sweetest real life iteration of that that I could have possibly imagined.

Because boats are ladies in terms of how we gender them. She got her own zip code. But that is just the most genuinely pure way that could have come to life. It's also, according to Travel and Leisure magazine, this company, the J.W. Westcott Company, has been doing this kind of delivery since 1874. So I don't know when they got the zip code, but there's probably centuries of fathers and sons running this mail boat company.

But it's part of the U.S. Postal Service, but it's semi, it's got a name. There's a company that runs it? Yeah, they own the boat, but it is officially a post office and then the the way you address it is you write the vessel name marine post office detroit michigan 48222 and so then officially it runs through this single boat that is that entire zip code 48222 i know this is less true these days but i am charmed by how you use how specific you could get with mailing a letter in the past. Like this goes to Melinda at the

Stripey house. So you know the one. There's just a past before like, well, after the post office was a thing before we got really good at nailing down the specifics of where things are that mail still got where it needed to go. It's very impressive. We have two more takeaways today and let's go straight into takeaway number two. Post offices were a 200 year long government scheme to build America. Like at the post office, I don't think people realize how much it laid out towns and infrastructure and like the entire fabric of the country. And one of the ways is the way where like towns kind of organized around their post office. There's even a thing

where there's that guy Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote Democracy in America in the 1830s. And it's like one of the main accounts of early America. And he visited the Michigan territory by riding a mail coach. He said, quote, from time to time, we came to a hut in the midst of the forest. This was a post office. That's just like what they were in these towns. Like, oh, we have a hut now, so we get mail. That's how we work. I mean, I guess it is just like it's the supply line, like especially 200 years ago.

So it's like, yeah, this is where you're going to get materials and information, and that's what you need to continue moving west, killing people. Yeah, there is that element as well. Yes. It is kind of a piggyback too, right? You know, the post office accomplishes what it does without great infrastructure, right? Give it a mule and a hut and it'll get the job done. And with the supplies it delivers, you can build the pieces of infrastructure. And then the post office folds itself into that infrastructure. It becomes a tiny little diamond dealer in the fourth floor of a building in Manhattan, or it becomes, you know, a large, the biggest building

in town or whatever. And then it uses the freeways that were built around it. But it is, you know, a large, the biggest building in town or whatever. And then it uses the freeways that were built around it. But it is, you know, because of its determination to work without huge infrastructure, it'll always be sort of this little spear tip that pushes its way ever forward wherever we Americans slither. It is definitely that like unavoidable balance of the country was built on stolen land. And so every town that has a post office, it was stolen land. And then also for the people who move into that town, it becomes really the center of the town in a lot of ways. I don't think everybody knows that the Postal Service

didn't start doing home delivery until 1863. Until then, you had to go there to get your mail. And in most places you still had to for a long time. So it was the center of the town, like automatically because mail was the biggest deal in the entire world. Like it was how you talk to anyone. That makes sense. I mean,

it's like, if you think you're addicted to your phone now, just think about trying to get a missive in 19 or 1803. Ooh, you want that mail? Just hundreds of Americans ringing a post, like lining a post office, just swiping on it. Swiping, scrolling its walls, trying to see new letters. More, more. Yeah, that's I think that that feels right.

It's like you should feel about the post office exactly as you feel about america because it is one and the same a shiny rock you shouldn't pick up and look at the bottom of if you want to feel the same about it right yeah really we must have taken this model from elsewhere in society right where did we get the idea to have a post office that did what our post office does is this the thing that's everywhere? There's also there's pretty, pretty good sourcing suggesting that another way the post office built the country is that the British postal system in the 1700s, according to historian Jeffrey Brody, was mostly designed to make money, like the British put up a postal service for

themselves so they could like earn cash. And 1700s America, the post office was designed to serve as a political and informational network and promote democracy and make it so people could learn about stuff. According to National Geographic, quote, President George Washington saw the post office as a way to cultivate committed American citizens. And so then the early post office delivered newspapers extremely cheaply and at a huge loss and then charged merchants a bunch for letters to make up for it. So they were like running a public postal system, mainly to make people educated and like able to vote and able to read and like figure out how to be a democracy because it was suddenly a new country.

This is a interesting iteration. I guess I hadn't thought about the post office from that framework that like where and why did the idea to run ours this way come from? But it does make sense that giving people information at a loss is a strategy that really helps spread word if that's what you want to do. That's dead on because there's also a thing where postal jobs through post offices were like most of the government in a way that I don't think people realize in the 1800s. And this is drawn on a National Geographic article called The Tumultuous History of the U.S. Postal Service and its Constant Fight for Survival by Boyce Upholt. So thank you, Boyce. But in 1831, postal workers were three quarters of all federal employees who were civilians. So other than soldiers, they were three quarters of all the

employees. In 1841, they were more than 79% of the employees, and we had more postmasters than soldiers in the United States. Civil War changed that because then they started building up the army and the government. But basically, pre-Civil War, the government was kind of just there to deliver mail. There wasn't really the taxation we have now. There wasn't a very big military. The government was mostly

a mail enterprise. And men, now that I'm thinking about it. But you know what I mean. Exactly. So there you go. Originalist conservatives. If this is the government you want, it should only be a post office. Oh, I'm an originalist. I'm a constitutionalist.

You should be all male. Male only. Yeah. We're wrong about bureaucrats, too. It's actually kind of amazing to be a civil servant that keeps things running. And civil planning is really, really hard. But we have this idea that like, moochers, pencil pushers, like, well, no, it's kind of a, that's somebody who devoted their entire career to the betterment of society. But sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

And also the constitution let the new federal government build post roads. Like that was something the federal government was allowed to do. So then by 1823, they built more than 80,000 miles of post roads because they were like, okay, let's just interconnect everything. That's something we can do. And then also the post office gave contracts to throw mail into the trunk to stage

coach lines and steamboats and railroads and to this day, airlines. I know no one flies now, but if you do, you could look out the plane and see them like loading mail into the cargo hold sometimes. It's such an interesting, yeah, thing to think about the roots of,

that that's not a new idea. It's just a thing that didn't stop, that it's not like airlines hustled over to the post office and was like, hey, we got a great idea. It's like the post office has been throwing letters at every moving object since it was a thing. Like there's a kid pushing a hula hoop with a stick. Put a letter on it. What's also like the idiots who are like, oh, the government should be run like a business.

At the first example of a government that a portion of the government that actually was being run as a successful business, they're like, well, we can't have that because we're invested in trying to destroy the government and maybe society. And so they had to destroy it or they're continuing to try to destroy it. We also we have one more fascinating takeaway here. or they're continuing to try to destroy it. We also, we have one more fascinating takeaway here. Takeaway number three. Except for the impact of a 2006 law, the post office to this day has been a really successful business.

I think people have like a conception that the post office is like inefficient or poorly run or it has a hard time making money. There's one law we'll talk about that made it so it is now unprofitable. But until then, even with the internet being around, they were doing good financially. They were a successful private business. Track record-wise, there's a great book by historian Philip F. Rubio, and it's called Undelivered from the Great Postal Strike of 1970

to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service. And it covers now, but also when the post office became a business, because it was run by the government from literally 1792 all the way to 1971. So like 180 years. And then there was a massive postal strike in 1970 where over 200,000 postal workers at 671 post offices went on strike even though legally they weren't allowed. They were allowed to have a union but not allowed to strike because they were public employees. And so the government could have fired all of them, but instead they privatized the post office, kept them on the job, and kept it going. post office kept them on the job and kept it going. And so then it became a post office that has like some government reaching into how it's run, but otherwise it's a business that has to

make money. And up until around 2007, they could pretty much do it. Like they had to do a universal service obligation delivering to 160 million addresses and they had to turn a profit. And until this law we're about to talk about came up, they were doing fine. They more or less made money most years. That's wild. I don't more or less make money most years. Well done, post office. And there's also a surprise, I think,

where the internet didn't kill it. I think people assume, oh, once email came around, done for. But we'll link to a history of it by the people at Marketplace at NPR. And they said email wasn't a huge hit, especially because online shopping was a huge boost. Like suddenly they were delivering way more packages all of the time. And so that brought in a lot of money. Like the internet didn't destroy the postal system.

We still have it. It's so funny that people think like my emails, my letters, my 32 versus 29 cents, like is the difference for this organization. And it's not like, I don't know, the pounds of stuff I have delivered at significantly more, but still a great bargain. It's. Yeah, absolutely. So why? What happened with that law that made? Why?

Why isn't it profitable anymore? What would we do? So this law is from December of 2006. It's called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. You might have heard of it if you're a John Oliver viewer or a Samantha Bee viewer. They both done amazing stuff on it recently. They've both done amazing stuff on it recently. But the quick version is that in December of 2006,

there was a just like breezy voice vote in Congress when everybody was going home for Christmas that just kind of, you know, tucked this law through and Bush signed it. And what it did is it capped the prices USPS can charge. So it limited what they can charge, required them to keep delivering six days a week, and it forced them to put aside $5.6 billion per year to cover 50 years of employee pensions and retiree health benefits. So within 10 years, they needed to stack up 50 years of retirement savings for their employees, which is really hard to do, and no other company or department in the whole country has to do it.

And so suddenly they have an artificial money problem ever since then, every year. They haven't turned a profit in 13 years. Rude. Right when they're trying to deliver everybody's Christmas gifts. So has this, like, has been destroying the postal system clearly

has been a conservative plan since the conservatives had a the modern conservative movement like yeah because there's no other reason to have that that type of restriction um on a business that type of rule and regulation that conservatives claim they hate yeah like it's there's a lot of takes on it this historian philip rubio it's interesting he kind of argues that they didn't totally want to destroy it destroy destroy it, but they had some Iraq and Afghanistan wars going on and they wanted more money for that. And then also they were just way overconfident about the US

economy because the Great Recession was still a year or two away. So at the time, Postmaster John E. Potter said, quote, the Postal Service has never been stronger and this law enables us to build on our successes and then in 2006 they had a 900 million dollar surplus and then every year since then they've been losing money because they have to save all their retirement money up front so it's just too hard to do but also not to be like not to be like too happy-go-lucky about it but i feel like if just this one single law that they breezily did one time can make all this happen, they can just pass another law. Like this isn't like guns where we need a constitutional change or something or like some other intractable thing where we need

a crazy thing to happen. You know, just like bare majority of Congress and the president can turn it around really easy. I mean, not easy, but you know what I mean? Definitely. That's a breeze, Alex. That's gonna happen within the next five years for sure. And then after not easy, but you know what I mean. Definitely. That's a breeze, Alex. That's gonna happen within the next five years for sure. And then after that time, we will have the recognizable landscape of our country that we have come to depend on. Definitely. So I see this coming right around the corner. Yeah. For sure. We're not strictly speaking heading in that direction, speaking heading in that direction. But, you know, it's possible.

Man. It's possible. I hope that someone, again, that your new listener in 2023 listens to me and is like, is that woman wearing a tinfoil hat? She sounds insane. I want nothing more than to be wrong. Because there's also, there's one other thing with the law where it, for some reason, made it specific that the Postal Service only deals with letters and packages.

But throughout history, the post office has dabbled in banking and processing a lot of paperwork for people and been creative in all these ways, like loading mail on planes and things. So that's also a very easy thing to change legally. We just changed the law so they can do, people have suggested they could be banks again, they could handle hunting and fishing licenses. You know, we could just like think of a way to keep them going.

That's all we need to do. Broadband, they should be our time Warner. That would be. There's no reason they shouldn't. You did it. This is the first time it's happened, Alex. At the end of the podcast, the discussion actually came up with a good solution

to a big problem. This is incredible. I've never seen that happen before. Andrew, hats off. That was an exceptional... I'm also saying that because I just heard the idea for the first time. I am sure that somebody will quickly correct me on Twitter and link me to the many sources I should have found already suggesting this idea.

But if you really did just come up with that, you did it. I'm positive I did it. Congratulations. Well, let us know. Let us know. We'll debate that. You did it. I'm positive I did it. Congratulations. Well, let us know. Let us know. We'll debate it. Debate me, listeners. Debate me, corner. Blah! God.

Just immediate fighting with the listenership. Let's do it. Let's take them down. Let's set up a real adversarial relationship with you to your listener immediately, right out the gate. That's a good way to, no. Well. I don't think that's possible.

That's not Alex talking. I don't think anybody tunes in to an Alex product being like, I'm ready to fight. This guy's voice gets me so pumped up to fight. Alex's hot taste get me ready to throw fists. I'm set. That's the whole Alex fan base right there I know you're ready I can feel you clawing into the steering wheels of your cars

as you rage drive listening to that angry voice of veins popping out on his head as he yells about the post no this is about the most cool and tame sweet audience I can imagine get pumped folks folks that's the main episode for this week my thanks to caitlin gill and andrew t for getting

this whole dang podcast off the ground also Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com, that's the way you get it. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic, Americans mailing Americans, as in putting themselves like in the US mail, mailing themselves. Visit sifpod.fun to hear about that and to back this entire podcast operation. Also, surprise, you know, as a special treat, it's like a little premiere thing, we put out two entire episodes of this podcast. So there's a second main episode about cattle in the main feed

and a second bonus episode about cow tools in the bonus feed. I hope that's not confusing. The point is to give you two entire episodes of the show on launch day. You know, enjoy. And thank you for exploring U.S. post offices with us in this podcast. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, there are tons of strange and cool and unique post offices. Takeaway number two, post offices were a 200-year-long government scheme to build America. And takeaway number three, except for the impact of one 2006 law, the post office is a successful business.

Those are the takeaways. We did it. Also, please follow our guests. Be sure to check out Caitlin Gill's stand-up album. It's titled Major, and it's at CaitlinGillComedy.com. Be sure to watch ABC's Mixed-ish online, season one out now, and hear Andrew co-host the Yo, Is This Racist? podcast with the wonderful Tawny Newsome on Earwolf in your podcast app. Many research sources this week.

Here are some key ones. A great article titled The Tumultuous History of the U.S. Postal Service and Its Constant Fight for Survival, written by Boyce Upholt for National Geographic. A great book titled Undelivered from the Great Postal Strike of 1970 to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service written by historian Philip F. Rubio. Find those and more sources at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Get all The Bud's Band's music into your life and all the music of their amazing label, Daptone Records, by visiting daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Isn't it sharp? I sure think so. Find more of Burt's art on Instagram, at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to Brenda Yang,

Kathy Schmidt, Kevin Tanager, Andrew Bridgman, Joe Vikes, Joel Stein, Jason Pargin, and many, many others I'm failing to name for their enormous help in launching this whole dang podcast. Because this is the premiere. And before it wraps up, I want to thank hundreds of you, hundreds of you showing up to the Patreon page for this podcast and backing it without any episodes to hear. Like you just plunked down, signed up, did the thing. I am bowled over by that is the phrase I have found. I'm just knocked out. I'm incredibly grateful to you. And I'm excited to kind of go on this journey with you because you folks are basically the founders of the show. This is the podcast that I wish existed. You folks are why that's possible.

I just can't thank you enough. But yeah, I think all that's left for me to say is that we will be back next week with more secretly, incredibly fascinating podcasts. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.