Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast where on this week's episode, we are continuing

our look at mass shootings of the 20th century. Just as this epidemic was beginning to gain

a foothold in American culture. In the intro to our previous episode, I talked briefly about

the late 20th century phenomenon of going postal and the spat of so-called disgruntled postal

workers that spawned this term. In fact, going postal reached such wide use that pack-and-ship

stores began using this as their business name. Late night talk shows and sketch comedy programs

would invoke the disgruntled postal worker as a punchline. And I guess there is something

inherently funny about the phrase. A lot of people had never heard the word disgruntled before it

was used in the context of disgruntled postal worker. But the word disgruntled sounds like an almost

perverse understatement when describing an active shooter. And what is it about working for the

U.S. Postal Service that's so disgruntled some of its workers? Over half a million people work for

the U.S. Postal Service in America. It's one of the largest employers in the U.S. and it's also a

government job. U.S. Postal employees are government employees and most of those half-million employees are

I'm sure normal well-adjusted people who have the tools to manage workplace stressors and other

everyday challenges. But a small subset of those people aren't. And an even smaller subset of

that subset has been populated by some deeply troubled individuals whom you could describe as

ticking time bombs waiting to explode. The deadliest postal shooting of all remains

also the deadliest workplace shooting in American history to date. And I hope that's a record

that's never broken. But this was the rampage that first made going postal a thing. Like I said,

I referenced it briefly in last week's intro and that's the story you're hearing about today.

So it was on the morning of August 20, 1986, around 6.45 am. The Edmund Oklahoma Post Office Branch,

which was a large brick building that had been recently built, hadn't opened its doors for

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