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Guaranteed Human. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? All right, so I was reading this story from a couple years ago, and it was about this three-year-old boy whose dog Moe had passed away. So to help the boy cope with Mo's passing, the boy's mom would get him to write these letters to Mo. And then they addressed them to Mo Westbrook, Doggy Heaven, Cloud One. And each time they put the letter in the mailbox, she'd sneak back out and remove the letter. And one day she forgets to do this. And she just assumed the postal worker would get it and throw it away. But a few weeks later, they go out to the mailbox. And there was a letter with the return address on it from Mo. And the letter read, I'm in doggy heaven. I play all day. I'm happy. Thank you for being my friend. I love you, Luke. That's pretty sweet. Yeah, and here's the thing. So anywhere I've lived, the mail carrier has been one of the nicest people in the neighborhood. I mean, we chat with ours anytime we see them.

And there are not only so many more good stories about heartwarming moments like this,

but there are just so many fascinating stories in the history of the U.S. Postal Service.

So that's what we're diving into today. Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to part-time genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always, I'm joined by my good friend Mengesh Hotiketer. And on the other side of the soundproof glass, the man who always delivers Tristan McNeil. And on today's show, we're shining the spotlight on one of the great unsung heroes of our society. And that's the U.S. Postal Service.

Of course, everybody's aware of the U.S.PS, but many of us tend to take its services for granted

and not really think about the ridiculous amount of planning and work that goes into processing

and delivering more than half a billion pieces of mail a day.

In fact, the only time we devote much thought to the Postal Service at all is when we need something from it or when something's gone wrong and we want to blow off steam by griping about it. So today we're trying to break that bad habit by sharing some of the most interesting pieces of postal history, as well as some of the craziest stories to ever make it out of the mailbag. Definitely. And to make sure we don't miss any of the good stuff, we'll be talking to the keeper of postal history herself, Nancy Pope. Nancy Pope's the top historian at the National Postal Museum. So we'll talk to her about what it takes to be a postal historian and find out what she considers to be the most interesting pieces of postal office history.

All right. So I want to start with one of the things that really stood out to me while doing our research, and that's the immense scope of the postal services operations. I mean,

we're talking about the largest retail network in the nation. So there were 31,000 active U.S.

post offices. And just to put that in perspective, that's more than all

the domestic McDonald's, Starbucks, and Walmarts combined. And to staff all those locations

and handle the deliveries between them, the Postal Service employs over half a million

people and maintains a fleet of 227,000 vehicles.

That's one of the largest civilian fleets in the world.

The U.S. Postal Service is a gargantuan nonstop delivery machine.

Yeah, and the scope of what all that manpower and tech can achieve is equally impressive.

So the U.S.PS is actually responsible for the delivery of nearly half the mail volume in the entire world. That's 47%. But I think the most amazing thing about the whole crazy operation is that for almost 50 years now, it's cost taxpayers virtually nothing. There aren't a whole lot of government departments or agencies you can say that about it. It is impressive.

But I noticed you said cost virtually nothing for taxpayers.

And I always wondered whether like things like the postage sales and products and all their special services like express mail, you know, covered those costs.

So are you saying it actually does receive some government funding though?

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