Stuff You Should Know - How the U.S. Postal Service Works

Episode Date: March 15, 2013

The USPS is currently teetering on the edge of going under and there are a lot of plans to save it, from cutting Saturday service to creating federally-protected email addresses linked to individuals at birth. Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the history and future of the postal service. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now, the War on Peace Report, the War on Peace.org, etc. I'm Steven. How you doing? Good. Jerry just said, let's do this old school right before she record and I have no idea what she meant. She meant like the three of us back in like,

yeah, you know, cheers is back. I thought she meant, let's make it crappy in five minutes long. Right. And we need like little empty tin canes to speak in, dude. Make it sound right. How you doing, Jerry? That's great. Jerry gave us a thumbs up. I know in our new murder room, Jerry is within our eyesight again after a long layoff where she was not within our range of viewing abilities. It's kind of weird because now I'm looking at you, but I can clearly see my peripheral vision that she's on Facebook. She's waving. She's brushing her teeth. She's rearranging the severed human heads that are in jars all around the place. That's creepy. Yeah. You want to talk post office, man? Yeah. You want to give the disclaimer that we're only talking about the

post office in the US of A? I think you just did. Okay. 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, Chuck, but the USPS is in a lot of trouble. Yeah. Their 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 2013 if they don't do something. Yeah. That's this year. Yeah. I think they lost $16 billion last year. Yes. And $5 billion the year before. So that's three times as much money in a year. That's bad news. Here's the caveat to that $16 billion loss, though. $11 billion of that was in payments to the future benefits of

postal workers that have not yet retired, but will. Yeah. And the Postal Service is the only federal agency of any sort that is required to prepay its employees' benefits for the future. In 2006, a lame-deck session of Congress said, you know what? You guys need to make sure that your workers are taken care of. Right. So you guys have to start prepaying over the next 10 years. And they have been. And they've been bleeding money. I mean, like a $16 billion loss. Yeah. But $11 billion of it was to these future payments. Oh, I guess that would make sense then. Then, if you took out that $11, they would just be at about the same loss as before. Right. Just a mere $5 billion a year. Right. But, and that's a lot of money to lose. It is. But they're figuring out

ways to make up for that extra loss. And one of the big ones that's on the table now is cutting out Saturday delivery. Yeah. August 1st, I think. Yeah. They figure they can recoup $2 billion a year by doing that. So then they're down to three. The thing is, is 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. Yeah. It's part of the federal government, but it gets $0 in tax revenue. And it's also a thrill-kill cult. Right. Exactly. That's the horrible secret of the US Post Office. Right. So they get no money besides what they can make off of their own revenue. Yeah. They're essentially a corporation. Right. So they get no, but they get, but they're also under the purview of the federal,

the federal government. Yeah. It's a weird, weird thing. And they can't act without asking Congress, and Congress hasn't exactly been forthcoming lately. Yeah. They haven't approved the Saturday thing yet. Have they, Congress? Here's the thing. Isn't that still up? They've been trying to get Congress to approve that forever. The Senate passed a bill that said after two years, we'll let you cut out Saturday service. We'll give you $11 billion in overpayments that you guys made toward the retirement stuff, all this stuff back. They went to the house, and the house didn't do anything with it. Right? Yeah. So, you know, the fiscal cliff? Oh, yeah. Well, the US Congress passed a stopgap measure, basically a federal budget that says within this

period, we're still able to operate, right? Right. And the USPS says, ha-ha, you didn't include our mandate from 1981 that we have to carry out Saturday service in that stopgap. 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 loophole they're going to use to shut down Saturday service? Yes. Except for packages, medicines? Just packages. They're going to deliver packages on Saturday. And here's a really good reason why. An express mail. Their revenues from packages have increased 16% over the last 10 years, whereas first class mail, you know, letters have gone down 32%, I believe. So they're making almost all of their money because it's only 45 cents to mail a

letter from Florida to Hawaii. 46. Is it 46 now? Yeah. 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 mail order medicine on that list, too. Express mail packages and medicine because at first I was like, who cares? I don't need I don't need my mail on a Saturday. Right. But you need your medicine on a Saturday or else you go blonde. Well, 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. Yeah. So if you want to go to your P.O. box, maybe there'll be some mail. Maybe there won't be. Who

knows? I bet you've had a P.O. box. I've been thinking about this, haven't you? No. Really? Yeah, have you? No, you just struck me as a kind of person that would have had a P.O. box at one point. That's where I get all my guns in the mail. So I'm pretty worked up about this, as you can see. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. Yeah. Who'd have thought that the postal service would ever be interesting? Sure. I think parts of this are very interesting. And we would just want to go ahead and say hello to all of our postal carriers out there. Yeah. That listen to our show. Who won us over during the Bush era. Because we've gotten emails from you guys and gals. Yeah, including one of our favorite people out there is a postal worker. Who? Van Nostrand. Oh, yeah. Is

he? This one should really be a tribute to Van Nostrand. He's a carrier? 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. All right. So Van Galore's Van Nostrand, this is for you. Yeah. But okay. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about the postal service. Man, I'm all jazzed about the USPS, dude. I'm glad you are. 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 2007, it was on an upward trajectory. Sorry, 2006, right? Yeah. 213 billion, 137 million pieces of mail that year. Yeah. It's down to 167 now. Yeah. And then when was this written? I think 2007, 2008. Okay. So then they

had 700,000 employees. Now they have about 580,000. So they've been and trim the budget mode, I think, for the past few years. Well, the reason why in 2006, they also made $72.8 billion. I mean, those stamps add up, you know. In 2011, they made 66 billion. Wow. Not bad. Yeah, but they're still losing a lot of money. I mean, that's what $7 billion in difference in just five years. Yeah. It's not good. It's not good. So where'd all this come from, Chuck? It came from back yonder day. You know, people have always needed to communicate, obviously, from long distances. And in 1639, they, you know, colonists here in the new, I guess they weren't in the 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, send us more tea and crumpets. Right. And so the first official postal service was established in 1639. Richard Fairbanks Tavern in Boston was the official mail drop for overseas there in Massachusetts. Yep. 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 another pub. I would imagine that you just went to that pub and said, hey, is there any mail? And they say, no. And you turn around and travel the 500 miles back to your village. So that was step one. Step two was about 40 some odd years later, 1683 William Penn established very famous person, obviously, the first official post office in Penn, Sylvania.

He has named after him. That's right. And I love the side note here in the South, private messages were just sent between plantations. Yeah. So they would probably just give it to a slave and say, carry this over to that guy. Right. And then flash forward a little bit more to 1691. The British crown gave a man named Thomas Neil a 21 year grant for the postal service in the United States. And he paid like seven shillings a year. So that's nothing, right? He still died in debt. Did he really? With a monopoly. So the postal service has always been kind of tricky to cull money from. Interesting. So that continued till 1774. 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 going to start and establish our own constitutional post office for any kind of mail going from anywhere, basically, inter colonial mail. Yeah. Yeah, it was very cutting edge at the time. Sure. And actually, you know, when the British were carrying out the postal service on behalf of the colonies in the colonies, 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 roads. He said, like, we're going to start working like 24 hours a day. We have like lots of shifts. We're going to put up milestones. Like the postal service helped improve the connectedness of the colonies. Thanks to him.

Yeah. So in the Continental Congress said, Hey, we want our own postal service. Ben Franklin became the first postmaster general. Sure. 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. So this is to me when it gets super interesting was in the 19th 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. Right. So as quick as possible. What's crazy is as quick as possible was to go down New York around Florida on a ship. Yes.

On like a steam ship. Yeah. 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, communicated with the West Coast for a while. Yeah. Until some stage coach routes routes were established. There was a southern route and there was a central route. Yeah. And the southern route you could supposedly use year round. Sure. Cause it's lovely down here. But then the central route, it was faster, but they said, you can't use that year round. There's

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. Right. And then the, uh, overland mail company, like, well, we're going to do it over land. Right. So that's what we're going to call our company. Yeah. So they got the contract, the overland mail company, um, along the southern route took about 25 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,

that wanted to get that contract away from the overland company. Right. The COC and PP. And they said, you know what, we know the central route shorter. We're going to prove that we can use it year round and we're going to set up something that it's just going to blow this 25 day thing out of the water. And they set up the Pony Express. Yeah. And they had stations, what, every 10, 20 miles and a rider would ride from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento or be part of a line of riders. Well, yeah, that's the key. They'd go about a hundred miles and then they change horses every like 10 or 15 miles. Yeah. So the same rider would change horses because they, they rode, they average 10 miles an hour, which doesn't sound fast, but you got to factor in

like the Sierra Nevadas where they're just crawling up these mountains. Right. So these dudes were riding hard and on flat ground. If they're averaging 10 miles an hour, right? Yeah. And they're going 24 hours a day. They're going 2000 miles, 10 miles an hour. That's what, 20 hours. Yeah. That's, no, that's 200 hours. So what is that? That's less than 10 days. So that's, that cuts that overland companies rate by 150%. Yeah. There was always one set of riders going east, one set going west. Yeah. I think when you, when you were relieved by another rider, yeah, 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, 25 bucks a week, which

at the time unskilled laborers made about a dollar a week. Yeah. So, and did you read the first ad they ever put in? No. Wanted young skinny wiry fellows, not over 18, must be expert riders, 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, light, skinny kids because, you know, you didn't want some big dude like me up on a horse. Right. 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 was like 14. Oh, wow. 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 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 10 or 20 miles. You've got all these employees going. Yeah. And they proved it. They proved that the central route could be used year round. And so they got the contract then, right? No, the overlink 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. Yeah. And so the US government said, no, no, you guys do half and then let the, uh, let the overlink 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. And everyone's like,

oh, well, I guess, I guess we're all out of business now. Yeah. That was it. The pony express was sold to Wells Fargo and basically shut down. Yeah. I think American Express ended up branching out of Wells Fargo too. Yeah. Like these are old, old companies. Yeah. These modern banks and credit card companies. It's interesting how far they go back. But think about that, man. Even as far back as the mid 19th century, new technology was putting mail delivery out to pasture. Yeah. And then mail delivery would evolve and like figure out how to come back. Yeah. That's pretty cool. foreshadowing. It is. So this is a big jump forward to the mid 1960s. Yeah. A lot happened in between then. It didn't. Actually, we started to go move, um, further and further out into the

suburbs. There's a huge population boom in the, in the post war era and businesses started to realize the value of direct mailing and all of 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. Yeah. So it was, they weren't automated at all and they needed to be right. And so there was a postal reform that was undertaken. Yeah. And this was, uh, in 1971, 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 1971. Yeah. 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, right, 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 1792 that said you, the Postal Service is one of the most essential services of the federal government. Yeah. No person is cut off in this country. None shall not get delivered. Exactly. Yeah. 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 and business and commerce going all the time. And the Postal Service is 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, like especially rich people when they started building in these remote areas. Yeah. Because then all of a sudden you had to add that to your route. Well, there's a 60 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 use smoke signals? Come on. They do. In fact, I actually wrote an article on smoke signals.

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say we should podcast 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 article. 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 1986. 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. Wow. All right. So 1986, Edmond, Oklahoma, Patrick Henry, Cheryl, killed 14

coworkers. Um, 1991, another one happened, uh, including a, uh, supervisor getting killed with a samurai sword. Yeah. Um, November 1991, uh, Thomas, uh, McElvane shot and killed four coworkers, wounded five others, then shot himself. And then 1993 and then in 2003, two more incidences of postal workers killing fellow postal workers. It was like just between 86 and 97, 40 people died at postal, at post offices from postal rampage. Yeah. 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, Murder by Proxy. Oh yeah. And it's all about the postal

shootings. So weird. Like where they came from. There's a lot of scrutiny at like the, of the management techniques of people at post offices. There's got to be something to it. I mean, oh yeah. If you watch this, like it was clearly how many other industries, uh, had that many office shootings, you know, retail, actually your, the homicide rate is three times higher in retail than it is at the post office. But you don't say go and retail, right? That just means you're going shopping. Well, it's like drinking the Kool-Aid. They really drank flavor aid and that's right. Kool-Aid's the one with that distinction. Oh yeah. All right. So that was going post. 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. Like right in the middle of it came up out of nowhere. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip

dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your

Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Zip codes, this is kind of cool. Zip codes were introduced in 1963 and then officially put in place in mandatory in 1967 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 coding system. Well, they did have other ones, but it was like one was New York City or something like that. Yeah. 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'd forgotten. Okay. So it's a zone improvement plan and it's 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. Yep. 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 visit plus four, I think certain buildings even will have their own plus four if it's a big enough building, right? Or if you get a lot of mail as a person. Is that what you're after? Is it plus four for your house? 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. So the first digit there represents the state here in Georgia. That's a three. It increases as you move west. And there are some states that share each digit. Yeah, like two is taken up by a lot of states. There's the district of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, man, all twos. I'd be mad if I lived in one of those states. So then you got the second and 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 to right until you've got Josh Clark's house. Right. Like this state,

this section facility, yeah, 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's mail. It handles 40% of all of the mail in the world. Oh, 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, yeah, between New York and San Francisco, um, before it got there. Really? Yes. Now with zip codes. Well, let's talk about what a letter does. Okay. And this is all

thanks to zip codes. So I write a little love letter. I'm going to mail it to Emily, which is weird because we live together, right? Just be 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, uh, the poor man's trademark. Oh yeah. I've heard about that. Is to mail something to yourself in the field. I think it depends on the judge. Yeah. Probably. Okay. So you put it in your mailbox. Postal carrier is going to pick it up. They're going to take it to the post office. Yeah. Um, they're going to 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? Yeah. Um, and then the, uh, the, the packages, well packages are put on one, one belt and then letters are put on another and they're, 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. Frontwards and upright. Yep. And then they put a little barcode on the back of the letter in, uh, I think ultraviolet ink. Yeah. Well, first thing it does is it gets a postmark and cancellation lines 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 printed 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 too. Yeah. 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. It wakes up, what I think it is, reads it, types it in and then it's, so it stays on the line. It doesn't have to come out any longer. That's, that's pretty new 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. Yeah. And so that's what's read. That's right. The thing on the back is invisible, I think, right? Yeah. It's fluorescent. This is just showing off. We have invisible ink. Uh, 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 in what will eventually be, uh, a tray that will be delivered back to a post office. Right. Or a sorting facility. Or does it go straight to a post office? Um, it goes to now another processing plant. Right. So imagine each processing plant, like regional, I guess, has a bunch of mail coming in on trucks that it sorts and then sends out. And then based on this zip code that it serves,

um, it, 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. Yeah. It then also sorts through those. That's right. And it actually sorts them into an individual carrier's 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 all, they still have like circulars, magazines, bulk mail. They have to go through and put it for every address. All that crap that ends up in my recycling bin, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Although the coupons.

Oh, remember our junk mail episode from years and years back when we got so much holy cow 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. Um, so if you're going to address a letter, there are a few guidelines. You know, you got to put your address legibly in the front. You got to put your little return address in the upper left corner. Yeah. On the front. Don't put it on the back. No. Upper left corner there. And don't use periods and commas. Like if you write P O box, it's not P period, O period. Although that doesn't matter. Apparently it allows for greater efficiency in reading your letter. Maybe. Cause I always put like Atlanta, comma, GA 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 arm's length. So don't write tiny. Right. 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 got to put your return address because if something happens, you want it to come back to you. Yeah. 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, house to forks or something. Oh, gotcha. And it's not the kind

of thing that if it doesn't come back to me, I would care. I gotcha. If I had some precious thing, I would put a return 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 services we surfaces services. We won't go over here. Yeah. But I did want to say that media mail is a great little, uh, trick, not a trick, but a great tool if you're mailing things like books and or DVDs because it's super cheap. Yeah. But it takes a while. But that's part of that mandate from 1792 that they want to keep the intellectual juice of America flowing through the postal

service. So yeah, things like that, like creative stuff or books or correspondence. Sure. 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 4.95 for shipping. And they probably pay like eight cents to mail it with media mail. That's the greatest scam of the 21st 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. Yeah. And not for two cents on Amazon. Yeah. So I think we said that the postal service has a monopoly on delivering mail, but not on delivering packages, right? Sure. So because they're kind

of in competitive business against like UPS and FedEx and DHL and all those guys, those guys have gone ahead and invested in infrastructure of say like air delivery, air transportation of mail. And the postal service has tried that before, like they tried a guided missile in 1953, which they shot full of mail from a submarine to a naval station in Florida. But it's just too expensive. Right. 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. Yeah. And the postal service said, Great. But at the same time, they kind of they stepped forward into the 21st century by doing so. Yeah. 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 was shipped by UPS, but eventually it made its way into your postal carrier's route and being delivered by the postal service. Yeah. There's way more mixing of package mailing than you would think. It's like a swinger party or something. Pretty much. And part of that deal in 2001 with FedEx was, Hey, FedEx said, Can we put our boxes at your post offices? And they said, Sure, for $126 million. And they said, You know, can we hitch a ride on your plane? And they said, Sure, for 6.3 billion over seven years. Yeah. But it's, you know, seems like a good agreement.

And they did the same with UPS. And we scratch our back. You scratched yours. We scratch your back. We'll scratch yours. Yeah. That all works? Yeah. Why didn't everybody just scratch their own back? I don't know. Okay. But because it's hard to reach. So if you realize that the postal service needs a few billion extra dollars, you say, why don't 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, I just add a few cents. Who cares? Yeah, what's the problem? Yeah, just print it.

That's forever stamps. 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 Wade got the one cent. Yeah, with the ducks. Yeah. And she was like, everyone needs the one cent whenever they raise the rates. Yeah. He's like, Oh, gee, I didn't think about that. So, but yes, there's a very long protracted difficult process of raising the postal rates. It's not a very easy thing. No. 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. In fact, you were supposed to contact the post office before installing your mailbox, which I had no idea to make sure it's like the correct placement and height. And so like the post office person or the mail carrier didn'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 they say generally 41 to 45 inches 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. Right. I guess I just got lucky then because I get my mail, you know, without any

burning down of here or without a post office 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 own 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, you can get a post office and say, look, I have a P.O. box, which means I'm working out of my bedroom. Right. It's like code, I think. Or 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 than their P.O. boxes. Yeah, sure. Okay. Or if you tend to move around a lot in the same town and you don't want to worry about

changing your mail and forwarding your mail, you can always just get a P.O. box. Yeah. So those are some reasons. You want to talk about the future of the post office? If it's around after October 2013? Sure. What is the future of the post office? Well, there's a lot of stuff coming down the pike. There's the cancellation of Saturday mail. Yep, this August. They're really going hard after package delivery services now. Oh, with the flat rates and stuff like that? Yeah, just really courting businesses to say, hey, consider us instead of UPS or FedEx. Right. And especially with prescription medicines because we have an aging population. It's going to do nothing but increase in size. So you're going to 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 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. It might hit you up for some. Right. But there's also a line of clothing coming out. Postal service line of clothing coming out. I'm not kidding. It's called rain, heat or snow. And that's, we almost didn't mention this. So the postal service is creed, right? Sure. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet sleet or hold on rain or sleet 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 motto. 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 in like 500 BC, 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. Yeah, some sort of sicknesses befallen you. Right. They were putting the mail before themselves. The show must go on. Right. So there's a line

of clothing called rain or heat or snow. And then they're also talking about creating a 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 IRS 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 the like a will or your medical

records or something like that. Yeah. And listen, is every conspiracy 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. Yeah. I don't know that I would want that either. 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 or reads it, they're going to be in a lot more trouble federally speaking than they would be if like they read your Gmail. Yeah. Because isn't it illegal to open like a federal offense to get someone's mail? 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? And he's thinking about this. So if you're even the least bit interested by this episode that we just recorded, there's an Asquire article called peace. I didn't know there's an Esquire piece. It's called do we really want to live without the post office. And it's by Jesse Lichtenstein. And it is really good. It's a really good overview of what does Jesse think we need it. He or she I think kind of leans toward we need it. And the more you start to like read about it, the more this weird kind of civic affection for the post office developed in right, 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 post men growing up. Yeah, 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 them like gifts at Christmas. And that's awesome. And now I have no idea who my postal carrier is, which is my fault. I need to just go out there. I think you do. Yeah. And also the postal service is responsible for the largest

food drive in the United States every year. Oh, really? Yeah, you know, that food drive where like you just put like canned food in your, in your mailbox and your postal employee picks it up. Really? You can do that? Yeah. I've never heard of that. It hasn't been very well publicized, but it like at least around here, I guess, but it's a huge food drive. Or at the very least, postal carriers are taking and eating cans of ravioli for dinner. This is delicious. I love this food drive. Yes. So don't just put cans of food in your mailbox. Check into when that is supposed to happen. That's got to be the worst day of the year for letter carriers. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Can you imagine? It's a lot of weight. Yeah. You got anything else? No. Respect your

postal carrier. You want everybody to go out and meet their postal carrier? Yeah, I want to give them a hug. I actually don't do that. They might mace you or something. Yeah. But give them a wave. Yeah. If you want to learn more about the post office, you can type that word, those words, into the search bar at HouseToWorks.com and be sure to check out the Esquire article too. It's very cool. And I guess before we get into that, Chuck, you want a message from our sponsor? Let's do that. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I was being charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana.

Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, and now it's listener mail time. Josh, I'm going to call this fan who thought we were wrong and did a little research, and we may not be wrong after all. That's a nice title. We had a bunch of filmmakers right in when we talked about the subliminal messages being inserted into movies in the 1950s by James Vickery,

because we said it's one three thousandth of a second or something, and a bunch of filmmakers went, there's only 24 frames per second. So if you switch that one frame, it would only be one 24. 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 I may have spoken too soon. I was assuming that Vickery was just changing the film itself, which would result in the message is showing much slower and at the maximum one 24th of a second. But I did some research and apparently he used something called a,

I've never heard of this before, a tachistatoscope. Tachistatoscope. I think you got it. Tachistatoscope. 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 so to all the filmmakers out there who wrote in and challenged this, I wrote back to a few that was like, geez, I don't know, man. I'm like, I'm looking for it. And they, you know, some of them were even kind of snotty about like research. So apparently put that in your tachistatoscope and smoke it is what I say. Yeah. And that is from Brian Henry. Yeah. Thanks, Brian, for further 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. If you want to let us know that you were wrong, even though you had told us that we were wrong at first, love those. Yeah. You can tweet that to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at discovery.com and you can write all over our website, uh, which is called stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works.com. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just

like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, everybody. I'm Tyler Florence. I'm Wells Adams. We're the hosts of the new podcast Two Dudes in a Kitchen. You might be asking yourself, why do these guys have a podcast? Because we love food. We got a chance to click together on television, on food network back in the day, connecting with fantastic techniques and having a great time while you're doing it. This is a podcast for you for you to call into, give us your feedback and we're here to answer

your questions. Kind of get those kitchen burners fired up. Listen to Two Dudes in a Kitchen on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.