pneumatic tubes

Did you know mail used to be sent underground in New York City and other U.S. cities? Imagine an underground world where mail was zipping around in tubes beneath the incredibly crowded and busy New York City streets. That’s what was happening for over half a century 4 to 6 feet below street level. In this episode, host Michelle Young, the founder of Untapped New York, will explain how the system worked and how the technology can still be found today. Special guests: Lynn Heidelbaugh, Curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum; Luke Kingma, former Vice President at the science magazine Futurism; Justin Rivers, historian, playwright and Chief Experience Officer at Untapped New York. Music by Kittens Ablaze ("Hotel Room", "Liarbird"), Absent Tiger ("Take it or Leave It"), and additional sounds by Ben Bynum and Mike Koenig. New York City skyline in icon by Bernadette Moke, the Downtown Doodler.

Communication is important or whatever, so Chip and James decide to talk about it. Learn about the system of pneumatic tubes under the streets of New York that carried mail, sandwiches, and one very unlucky cat. Plus, find out why skywriters sing the Scooby-Doo theme song to themselves while writing their messages.   

In this episode, Shakin Shaner is joined by four expert panelists to debate the complex issue of the Jetson Transport Tube Thingies: Why don't we have them and who dropped the ball.  Apparently companies in the 1960s were working on the technology to transport humans in pneumatic tubes just like in the Jetsons. However, we never got the technology so Shakin Shaner and Lisa, Ashleigh, Jim and Randy join him to debate the reasons why!  This....you don't wanna miss! 

Yes, Thom McAn and the Pneumatic Tubes sounds like a band. What it was, however, was a fun workday. This is what happens when the manager of a shoe store decided to take a young employee in a tour of the building to check out the old pneumatic tube system. And no, that's not a euphemism. That's exactly what happened.