NPR's Throughline: The Postal Service

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Books, Arts

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The US Postal Service has played a key role in much of American history - from the Declaration of Independence to more recent mail-in voting. It was conceived of by the founders as the way to create a united, informed and effective American democracy. But today, the postal service's future is in danger. Winifred Gallagher spoke to NPR's Rund Abdelfatah about how the postal service created the United States and the case for investing in this pivotal institution.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Andrew Limbong, and it's NPR's Book of the Day, here with a little something for you from our buddies over at ThruLan.
0:08.3	We figured it's the holiday season, which for me means being at the post office, 10 minutes before it closes, sweaty and like scrambling to make sure my nieces get their LOL surprise dolls in time for Christmas with the dolls creepy big eyes
0:21.9	staring back at me as I try to figure out which box they'll all fit into.
0:26.2	Sure, I could be a better uncle and do this in November or order them online and just ship
0:32.0	them directly to my sister.
0:33.8	But that'd be kind of short-changing the beauty that is the Postal Service, right?
0:37.6	I mean, this big lumbering system is going to get these boxes there in time.
0:41.9	And in many ways, is the real Santa.
0:45.3	Anyway, the ThruLine folks did this great episode back when the Postal Service was in the news in 2020.
0:50.6	It's with journalist Winifred Gallagher on her book, How the Post Office Created America.
0:55.6	And it's a fascinating interview where she connects the dots between post offices and roads and cities.
1:00.6	And there's even this one part where she talks about how her favorite postmaster general,
1:04.6	yes, she has a favorite postmaster general, was integral in fighting back against monopolists and Robert Barrett.
1:11.2	Give it a listen.
1:12.2	Okay, so a few months ago, one of our producers came in and was super excited to talk about something,
1:18.3	the Postal Service.
1:19.8	To be honest, we really weren't that excited or interested in talking about the Postal Service.
1:26.3	You know, it's something that like neither of us really thought about, right?
1:30.0	Who spends time doing that?
1:32.1	I mean, not me.
1:34.7	But we started reading up on the history, and we were like, you know what, there's something
1:40.1	here.
	...

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