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People of Agency

People of Agency

著者： People of Agency Podcast
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The Post Office is older than the United States, and that's not a coincidence. From the American Revolution to Rural Free Delivery, the Post Office has been a silent, foundational institution that literally built the roads and airways of modern America.

Join Aileen Day and Maia Warner-Langenbahn as they dig up the receipts and reveal the untold, radical history of this essential public good. This is a story about the unseen power that truly holds the country together, and why we all need to understand what's at stake when public institutions are under attack.

New episode every Monday.

Copyright 2025 All rights reserved. 世界 政治・政府 政治学
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  • Ep.7 - Return to Sender: What We Could Lose

    Ep.7 - Return to Sender: What We Could Lose
    2025/12/15
    "Okay, I get the history is interesting, but do we really need the Post Office anymore?" After their first episodes dropped, Aileen and Maia kept hearing this question. So they moved this episode up to address it head-on because this isn't about nostalgia, it's about showing what we'd actually lose. They reveal the manufactured financial crisis: between 2007 and 2016, 87-92% of the Post Office's reported $62 billion in losses came from a single 2006 law requiring them to pre-fund retiree healthcare 75 years into the future for workers not yet born. No other entity in America faces this requirement. When Congress repealed it in 2022, $57 billion magically reappeared. The crisis existed only on paper, but created 16 years of headlines that built support for privatization. Then they explore what we'd actually lose: the neuroscience of why physical mail creates deeper connections than digital messages, the $1.9 trillion mailing industry, the 70% of small businesses who can't afford private carriers, the 120 million veteran prescriptions delivered annually (with delays causing withdrawal and deaths), the 1 in 3 Americans who vote by mail, and mail carriers who save lives by checking on elderly neighbors. If Blockbuster was genuinely obsolete, it just died, Netflix was better. But the Post Office isn't fading naturally; someone's actively dismantling it. And when you follow the money, you see who profits: private carriers lobbying to weaken USPS while depending on it for last-mile delivery, media companies eyeing advertising budgets, and real estate interests targeting $50-100 billion in public buildings. This episode asks whether we're okay with veterans waiting for heart medication, rural communities losing their only federal service, and democracy becoming inaccessible to those who can't reach a polling place. Key takeaways to listen for [00:00:00] Introduction[00:03:17] Act I - Obsolete or Targeted?: How the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act required pre-funding retiree healthcare 75 years into the future (a requirement imposed on no other entity in America), why 87-92% of reported losses were manufactured by this mandate, and how $57 billion magically reappeared when Congress repealed it in 2022[00:13:15] Act II - The Mail You Can Hold: The neuroscience behind why physical mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process, creates 20% higher motivation response, and produces 70% higher brand recall than digital messages, plus how letter-writing during COVID became therapeutic intervention against isolation[00:24:36] Act III - The Economic Engine: Why 70% of businesses with fewer than 10 employees depend on USPS rates that are 50-68% cheaper than private carriers, how the $1.9 trillion mailing industry employs millions across printing/manufacturing/fulfillment, and why "junk mail" subsidizes universal service while keeping democracy affordable for small campaigns[00:35:00] Act IV - Who Gets Left Behind: The 187-mile daily rural routes and 300-mile Alaska deliveries that no private company would touch, the 120 million veteran prescriptions shipped annually (with delays causing withdrawal and deaths), the 1 in 3 Americans who vote by mail, and the mail carriers who save lives by checking on elderly neighbors[00:48:36] Act V - Why Now Matters: Who actually profits from dismantling the Post Office (private carriers depending on USPS while lobbying against it, media companies capturing ad budgets, real estate interests eyeing $50-100 billion in public buildings), and why the pattern of starve-then-privatize is the same playbook used on prisons and schools[00:52:37] Next Episode: From Savings to Surveillance: How Trust Was Weaponized Follow Us On Social Media Instagram @Peopleof_Agency TikTok @Peopleof_Agency YouTube @Peopleof_Agency Connect with Us Ready to explore how ordinary people built extraordinary public institutions? Subscribe to People of Agency wherever you listen to podcasts. Find us on social media @Peopleof_Agency. Have stories about how the mail shaped your community, or thoughts on protecting public services? We'd love to hear from you! peopleofagencypod@gmail.com Quotes: "If the Post Office is genuinely obsolete, if we really don't need it anymore, why is there such a coordinated, decades-long effort to kill it?" - Aileen"Blockbuster didn't need Congress to pass laws making it fail. It just became irrelevant and died." - Aileen"Of that $62 billion in losses, between $54 and $57 billion, that's 87 to 92%, came directly from this prefunding mandate. It had nothing to do with operational performance." - Aileen"When you know someone sat down, found paper, wrote by hand, addressed an envelope, bought a stamp, walked to a mailbox, your brain registers that as: this person spent time on me. That has value." - Maia"Without the Post Office in the market, private carriers would have zero reason to keep their rates affordable." - Maia"A business asks, 'Is this profitable?' A service ...
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    55 分
  • Ep. 6 - Cowboys of the Sky: How USPS Created Commercial Aviation

    Ep. 6 - Cowboys of the Sky: How USPS Created Commercial Aviation
    2025/12/08
    Everyone thinks 1918 was slow. Horse-and-buggy America, right? Wrong. The Post Office had built one of the most advanced communication networks on the planet, but it still took over a week to get mail coast-to-coast. So they looked at thousands of surplus WWI planes sitting idle and thought: what if we use flying death traps to move the mail? In Episode 5, Aileen and Maia trace the audacious, deadly birth of American aviation. When the first official airmail flight launched in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson watched the pilot forget to fuel his plane, take off in the wrong direction, and crash-land 25 miles south of where he started. But the Post Office didn't give up. They hired civilian pilots at rockstar salaries to fly open-cockpit planes through blizzards with no instruments except a compass and a ripped-up road map. Between 1919 and 1921, one in six airmail pilots died on the job. The mortality rate was staggering: one pilot dead for every 115,325 miles flown. Then, in February 1921, with Congress weeks away from defunding the entire program, a injured pilot named Jack Knight flew 830 miles through a blizzard at night, guided only by bonfires lit by farmers and postal clerks who believed in what he was doing. His flight saved airmail and forced the government to build the infrastructure that made commercial aviation possible: 616 beacon towers, 95 emergency landing fields, and concrete arrows across the American West that you can still see today. But once the Post Office proved it worked, private companies suddenly got very interested. This episode reveals how the government spent decades taking all the risk, buried 31 pilots, built every piece of infrastructure, subsidized airlines for 34 years, and then watched those companies erase the Post Office from the origin story of flight. Key takeaways to listen for [00:00:00] Introduction[00:03:33] Act I - The Audacious Gamble: The disastrous first airmail flight when the pilot forgot to fuel his plane, why Otto Praeger's "fly or you're fired" policy killed one in six pilots, and how the Post Office took full control after the Army proved unreliable[00:12:30] Act II - The Transcontinental Gauntlet: Why Congress threatened to defund airmail in 1921, how the awkward plane-train-plane relay system barely beat all-rail service, and Praeger's desperate decision to prove night flying with bonfires before funding disappeared[00:20:25] Act III - The Hero of the Sky: Jack Knight's legendary 830-mile night flight through a blizzard with a broken nose, a ripped-up road map, and bonfires lit by ordinary Americans who turned themselves into infrastructure[00:32:55] Act IV - The Handoff: How the Post Office built 616 beacon towers and 95 emergency fields from scratch, why the 1925 Kelly Act subsidized private airlines for 34 years, and how Postmaster General Brown's secret 1930 meeting created the Big Four airlines that dominated aviation for half a century[00:42:28] Act V - The Institutional Legacy: Why 85% of airline revenue came from mail contracts in 1930, how United and American Airlines are really just renamed Post Office contractors, and what it means when we erase public institutions from innovation stories Follow Us On Social Media Instagram @Peopleof_Agency TikTok @Peopleof_Agency YouTube @Peopleof_Agency Connect with Us Ready to explore how ordinary people built extraordinary public institutions? Subscribe to People of Agency wherever you listen to podcasts. Find us on social media @Peopleof_Agency. Have stories about how the mail shaped your community, or thoughts on protecting public services? We'd love to hear from you! peopleofagencypod@gmail.com Quotes: "The military built the planes for war, but it was the Post Office that turned them into a tool for progress." - Aileen"It's like pitching investors on a food delivery app, except your delivery drivers are using experimental jetpacks that explode half the time." - Aileen"Ohio: taking credit for things since 1803." - Maia"Imagine being told, 'fly through a snowstorm at night, here's a road map we ripped off the wall.' That's not equipment, that's desperation disguised as a plan." - Maia"The pilot was alone in the cockpit, but he wasn't really alone. All along that route, ordinary Americans turned themselves into the infrastructure. A beacon system made out of human willpower." - Aileen"Not turning it off. That's the difference between a legend and a footnote right there. The refusal to quit." - Aileen Hashtags #PeopleOfAgency #AileenDay #MaiaWarner #Airmail #AirmailPilots #JackKnight #USPSHistory #AviationHistory #PostalService #UnitedAirlines #AmericanAirlines #TWA #OttoPraeger #PublicInfrastructure #CommercialAviation #WWI #KellyAct #BeaconTowers #NightFlying #TranscontinentalFlight #PublicInstitutions #GovernmentSubsidies #HistoryPodcast #InfrastructureHistory #AmericanHistory Credits People of Agency is created and written by Aileen Day, with additional writing by Maia Warner-Langenbahn. It ...
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    50 分
  • Ep. 5 - Special Delivery: From Farm Rebellion to Mailed Babies

    Ep. 5 - Special Delivery: From Farm Rebellion to Mailed Babies
    2025/12/01
    What if the most revolutionary force in American history wasn't a politician or an army, but mail carriers bringing letters to farmhouse doors? At the turn of the 20th century, rural Americans lived in profound isolation, cut off from news, markets, and opportunities that city dwellers took for granted. Predatory merchants and railroad companies exploited this information gap, charging whatever they wanted because farmers had no way to know if prices were fair. But then something radical happened: farmers organized. Through the Grange movement, they launched a decades-long grassroots campaign demanding Rural Free Delivery, arguing that if city folks got mail delivered to their homes, rural Americans deserved the same democratic right. In Episode 4, Aileen and Maia trace how this seemingly simple postal reform transformed the entire country, spurring the Good Roads Movement, fueling the mail-order catalog revolution, and creating the infrastructure for modern consumer culture. Along the way, they explore the 17-year battle for Parcel Post (blocked by private express companies protecting their profits), the absolutely unhinged things Americans immediately mailed once the weight limit increased (yes, including live babies tagged "fragile"), and the inspiring story of Minnie M. Cox, a Black postmaster in Jim Crow Mississippi who forced Theodore Roosevelt to choose between political expediency and federal principle. This episode reveals how public institutions become battlegrounds, how corporate interests exploit public infrastructure for private gain, and why the fight over who the Post Office serves is still happening right now, with billion-dollar companies cherry-picking profitable routes while demanding the Post Office deliver everywhere else at a loss. Key takeaways to listen for [00:00:00] Introduction[00:02:33] Act I - The Battle for the Public Good: How isolated farmers organized through the Grange to demand Rural Free Delivery, fought private express companies and local merchants for 17 years, and proved that grassroots advocacy could force the government to serve everyone equally[00:15:06] Act II - The Unseen Revolution: Rural Free Delivery sparks the Good Roads Movement, mail-order catalogs break local monopolies and create modern consumer culture, but a four-pound weight limit keeps the Post Office from competing with private express companies who free-ride on public infrastructure[00:24:07] Act III - The Human Cargo: The 1913 launch of Parcel Post finally allows package shipping, Americans immediately test the limits by mailing babies, alligators, and beehives, revealing extraordinary public trust in an institution that became the backbone of community life[00:34:34] Act IV - The Political Postmaster: Minnie M. Cox, a college-educated Black postmaster in Indianola, Mississippi, faces violent threats from white supremacists during Jim Crow, refuses to resign early, and forces President Theodore Roosevelt to shut down an entire town's post office rather than cave to racist demands[00:46:35] Act V - The Battle Continues: How the same exploitation pattern from 1900 plays out today with Amazon, FedEx, and UPS cherry-picking profitable routes while depending on USPS for expensive last-mile delivery, except now we've handcuffed the Post Office by denying it taxpayer funding while demanding universal service[00:56:15] Next Episode and Credits Follow Us On Social Media Instagram @Peopleof_Agency TikTok @Peopleof_Agency YouTube @Peopleof_Agency Connect with Us Ready to explore how ordinary people built extraordinary public institutions? Subscribe to People of Agency wherever you listen to podcasts. Find us on social media @Peopleof_Agency. Have stories about how the mail shaped your community, or thoughts on protecting public services? We'd love to hear from you! peopleofagencypod@gmail.com Quotes: "For most Americans living in the countryside, their world was just a few miles wide. The nearest town could be a full day's journey away." - Aileen"The whole system was stacked against them. But it was about to change. Not with a massive political speech or a dramatic scientific discovery. But with a single idea: Rural Free Delivery." - Maia"This wasn't some tech billionaire 'disrupting' an industry. This was grassroots, baby! We're talking about neighbors talking to neighbors, coming together to build power and trust in the community." - Aileen"Rural Free Delivery wasn't just a postal service; it was the backbone of a new American experiment." - Maia"The Post Office didn't just deliver the mail; it literally laid the groundwork for modern American infrastructure. The path to the American Highway was truly paved one postcard at a time." - Maia"This is a fundamental public subsidy of private commerce, I might dare even say its an exploitation of a public good." - Aileen Hashtags #PeopleOfAgency #AileenDay #MaiaWarner #RuralFreeDelivery #ParcelPost #USPSHistory #PostalService #GrangeMovement #MinnieMCox #...
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    59 分
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