Mailed it in.

In case you feel like you're wasting time with whatever you're doing, let me just remind you of something:

The US Postal Service has its own podcast.

These days, every organization has to have its own pricey Web site, podcast, video introduction, YouTube channel, and LinkedIn page. Some never get much farther than all that. The part where they actually do something useful, benefit society, and/or make money? Forgot in all the excitement.

It's weird to see that the post office has a podcast. What is the post office's rep? Slow, late to adopt tech, humorless, a dinosaur, at worst just a benefits program that happens to deliver the mail, as General Motors became a benefits program that happens to make cars. The post office doesn't even have a lot of fun stamps anymore. The last time a stamp issue was a big deal was the Young Elvis vs. Fat Elvis vote in 1992.

I was looking for the tracking tools on the USPS site when I came across the link for the podcast, available on Apple Podcasts on on the Simplecast site. So, okay, what the hell do they talk about on a podcast by the post office? What could possibly interest you and me, going about our business and not much thinking about mail? I mentioned to my wife that the post office has a podcast and she said, "I can't imagine a duller one."

I downloaded episode 32, new this past Tuesday, in which Bill Gicker, USPS director of Stamp Services, talks about the 2023 stamp program. Other episodes deal with topics like postal history, delivery preparations for the holidays, the origin of the zip code, and why mail-in voting is totally safe, you bet, no cheating here. Each one is just around half an hour. 

Well, it actually was fairly interesting. Got some standard jukey intro music, and then the host introduces the guest, and they talk about post office things. I learned some info bits from the episode I heard -- like, new stamp designs are chosen three years before they are issued, a citizen's group is included in the voting, and the post office is at least as obsessed with diversity as any other American organization. I don't think I heard the name of a straight white person mentioned among the upcoming 2023 issues except Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (The current rule says someone must be deceased for three years before being eligible to be enstampified.) Peanuts stamps do very well, according to Gicker, as does the Black Heritage series. The host is fine and all, but I'm not much into postal things, so I don't know that I'd download another episode. Maybe some of the American history-tied episodes. (They did not mention that once again! the price of a first-class stamp is going up, this Monday the 22nd, to 63 cents.)

I'm sure there's an audience for this stuff -- even though interest in philately has declined, it has not gone away entirely. It might be of interest to employees; the post office currently has more than 516,000 full-timers on staff (about the population size of Atlanta, Georgia), and no doubt millions of former and aspiring employees in the wings. And the beauty of the podcast environment, like that of the blog (cough, cough), is that don't need to put up big bucks to design, write, and produce the thing. Why, sometimes one idiot with an obsession (ahem) is all it takes. So the USPS may not be spending much, but they got a PR program out of it. 

I guess it seems odd because -- why do it all? We know the post office loses money every year, and the odds of it being able to become a money-making enterprise are about as good as the odds of it being able to lay off redundant workers -- roughly 0%. Most of us treat it like a utility, so it's like if the local water company had a podcast. It could be interesting -- clean water available on demand is a great luxury in the history of the world -- but why do it at all? 

If you're the kind of person who likes checking out the odd spots in podcast world, check it out and let me know what you think. It's hard to find stats on podcast listeners or subscribers, but Mailin' It does have a 3.6-star (out of 5) rating from 182 reviewers, so someone must be enjoying it. But it just seems like another way that modern organizations spend time, effort, and resources to tell people how great they are instead of actually being great. (See also: the Academy Awards.)