Hey everyone, Jody here, just letting you know that we are running another of our favorite episodes from the archives as we give ourselves a little time off here and there during the holiday break.

I'll also say that as we've been deciding what to run from the archives, the current news, especially the news around the Donald Trump transition, keeps giving us news hooks.

So we've run a couple episodes about vaccines since it looks like we will have a health and human services secretary who is vaccine skeptical.

And now there's also news that the Trump administration might be postal service skeptical, or at least there's talk of privatizing the postal service.

So here's an episode about some of the early days of mail delivery in this country and how the government providing mail service really helped this country expand and how we don't always need to look for profit with all things.

But anyway, take a listen. This is a fun episode a couple years old. So maybe you haven't heard it or maybe it's time to listen to it again. Here we go.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. My name is Jody

Avergan. This day, 1896, on October 1st, five men on horseback set out to deliver mail along 10 miles of rugged terrain

near the Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia.

They would visit the countryside and farms near places like Charlestown and Haltown and

Uvila.

This was the beginning of what was known as rural free delivery, a mail service from the

U.S. government for people who lived

outside of towns and cities, which at the time was a huge part of the U.S. population and would

continue to be. Rural free delivery connected farmers and others in rural areas led to the further

integration of the Postal Service into American lives. It eventually kind of meant that there needed to be better roads and other transportation to rural parts of the country had a big effect there.

It was also, no surprise, a bit of a political and financial football, a laudable goal, but not without controversy and a lot of people backing it were really in it to line their own pockets, including you're

about to meet quite the character, folks, postmaster general John Wanamaker.

But this is a really interesting moment.

It goes far beyond just those 10 miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Here to discuss, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

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