What if the real glue holding America together isn’t laws or leaders, but the mail? In the premiere episode of People of Agency, Aileen and Maia kick off their deep dive into U.S. Postal Service history by exploring its revolutionary origins. Before independence, before the Constitution, the Continental Congress established the Post Office, making it older than America itself. From Benjamin Franklin’s efficiency obsession and William Goddard’s colonial tech-bro energy, to the remarkable Mary Katharine Goddard printing the Declaration of Independence with all the signers’ names (a potential death warrant), this episode reveals how the mail became democracy’s secret weapon. But this isn’t a sanitized origin story. Aileen and Maia confront the brutal contradictions baked into the foundation: postal roads built on stolen Indigenous trails, revolutionary ideals funded by enslaved labor, and a system that promised connection while enforcing exclusion. It’s a story of genuine innovation and profound injustice, visionary courage and devastating hypocrisy, and it’s more relevant today than ever as billionaires and politicians work to dismantle what remains of this public good.