All right, let's see what we got here.

That's me, partaking in a great American ritual, a daily trip to the mailbox. At least it used to be a great ritual.

All right, I have what looks like a bill here, but it's just a car insurance offer.

We have some coupons, Smart and Final, Safeway, Door Dash.

I have a credit card offer here, and this one's printed to look like it's handwritten on a piece of binder paper, but it's just a guy trying to replace my windows.

This stuff, the people who send it call it direct mail.

Those of us who receive it call it junk mail.

And my mailbox isn't the only ones stuffed with it.

By one estimate, the average American receives around 41 pounds of junk mail each year.

In an age of digital ads and email inboxes,

you may wonder why we still get bombarded with paper advertisements that most of the time

go straight into the recycling bin. Well, for starters, it works.

The faux checks, maybe the official envelope that looks like it's a tax document.

They're very inexpensive and those work really, really well. But there's another reason. The Postal Service has an

interest in delivering us as much junk mail as possible.

The direct mail industry, one of the things they like to say is that they basically pay the USPS's bills.

For the Freak economicsics Radio Network,

this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Krakett.

Today, junk mail.

If you're listening to this at home and you have this vague perception that there's more junk mail now than there was when you were a kid, you're probably right.

That's Aaron Gordon. He's a journalist who has spent a lot of time

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