You're listening to Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian. I'm Tony Cohn and the theme for today's show is special

deliveries. We're going to bring you three stories about how sometimes the way

something is delivered makes all the difference.

To the prenatal care of teen moms at the zoo

to the power of making, Megan Dietry.

Talk to me a little bit more about where we go in this episode.

So for this episode, I went on the hunt for some really good jokes and that actually

took me to the back hallways of the National Museum of American History where we learn all about Phyllis Diller's

meticulously organized joke files.

And then we go across town to the National Zoo to go behind the scenes at the Great Ap House

where we were warned as we entered that the smell was going to be very pungent.

Wow, you're so polite.

It lived up to it for sure.

And there we met a pregnant and kind of ornery

orangutan who frankly spat at me. Still kind of like her.

All right as much as I want to get to the spitting on you part, let's leave the orangutan alone for a minute and

focus on our first story.

So you've probably heard of drone delivery, right? This idea that Amazon or some other big company will be able to send you packages to your doorstep using just a little flying drone.

No more waiting days for your shipment. Just hit the order button and stand outside a couple of hours later, and bam, your new rice cooker gets dropped from the air right into your hands.

That totally sounds like science fiction, but that kind of high-tech lightning-fast mail

delivery has been tried before. Half a century ago, by the regular old post office, and instead of tiny robot helicopters they were using

I kid you not cruise missiles I promise this was less dangerous than it sounds. I got Frank Winter on the phone to tell us all about it.

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