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Cruises. Ships Registry,

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Malta, and Ecuador. Today,

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we take a journey into eternal

1:13

winter. A place

1:16

so cold that everything

1:18

slows down. Microbes, metabolic

1:20

processes, the human body. But

1:23

we are not going to some

1:25

trench deep in the abyss of

1:27

the ocean or some far-flung planet

1:29

or even Antarctica. We

1:32

are staying very close to home.

1:35

We are walking into the kitchen and

1:39

opening the refrigerator. It

1:41

is astonishing, the miracle of

1:43

having domesticated cold. When

1:46

you think about it, humans domesticating fire, people

1:49

say that's sort of what made us human. We

1:52

domesticated cold incredibly recently.

1:55

This is Nicki Twilly. She's one of my

1:57

favorite thinkers and writers of the world. about

2:00

the strangeness of our modern world. She's

2:03

the co-host of the Gastropod podcast,

2:06

and she's the author of a new

2:08

book called Frostbite, how refrigeration

2:10

changed our food, our planet, and ourselves.

2:12

And man, for a topic that at

2:14

first might not seem super sexy, boy,

2:17

is it a wild ride. Fridge

2:21

wasn't standard in American households until

2:23

the 30s and 40s, ice making

2:25

ability later still. And

2:27

so this domestication of cold is

2:30

very recent, and I think

2:33

equally transformative and important to

2:35

take a look at. Cold

2:39

is a big business these days, and

2:41

refrigeration has come a very long

2:43

way since the icebox. It

2:46

has transformed into something we call the

2:48

cold chain. I'm

2:53

Dylan Therese, and this is Atlas Obscura, a

2:56

celebration of the world's strange,

2:58

incredible, and wondrous places. And

3:00

today, Nikki is our guide

3:03

through the cold chain, through

3:05

this tightly temperature controlled ecosystem,

3:07

this geography of warehouses and trucks

3:09

and refrigerators that we use to

3:12

keep our food fresh all year

3:14

long. We are gonna go on

3:17

a tour of its wonders,

3:19

of the sprawling underground cheese

3:22

bunkers, and the towers of

3:24

frozen orange juice. Well,

3:26

you may not think about it when you're

3:28

making dinner, it underpins every single meal you

3:31

eat, and at this

3:33

point, our entire society.

3:35

So, Nikki got interested in

3:38

the cold chain 15 years ago.

3:53

She was a food writer, and the big trend was

3:55

farm to table. But the

3:57

word that she wanted to know more about that

4:00

sentence was to, there's

4:03

the farm, there's the table, what

4:06

happens in the to. And

4:08

so to figure that out, she

4:10

ended up having to don a parka

4:12

and over the years trek all over

4:15

the world and deep into this geography

4:18

of an artificial cryosphere, the cold

4:20

chain spread well across the world.

4:23

But to understand where all of this came

4:26

from, she also wanted to go back

4:28

to the very beginning. So

4:30

she went to the Thompson Ice House in Bristol,

4:32

Maine, one of the very last places you

4:35

can still harvest a big block of ice

4:37

straight from nature, from

4:39

the lake itself. So I

4:41

wanted to go to Maine to see really

4:44

one of the last remnants of

4:46

something that used to be common

4:48

all over the northern part

4:50

of the US. And at

4:53

the time when the ice harvesting was common,

4:56

North America's cold winters and lots

4:58

of freshwater ponds and rivers, that

5:01

was seen as the equivalent of Saudi

5:03

oil. It was exported around the world

5:05

and the basis of a global economy.

5:07

And then it vanished once we got

5:10

mechanical refrigeration, almost without trace.

5:12

And in Maine is one of the

5:14

last places in America where you can

5:16

harvest ice the way it would have been

5:18

done in the 1800s. To

5:21

harvest ice, you need a couple of

5:24

things. First, you need a frozen pond,

5:26

which Maine has plenty of. Then

5:29

you need these big monster tools,

5:31

like a giant long tooth saw

5:33

with a wooden handle on the

5:35

end. The ice harvesters first

5:37

draw a grid on top of the pond and

5:39

then you use the saws to cut the lines.

5:42

Finally, there is this chisel-like bar you

5:44

use to kind of snap the ice

5:46

blocks out of the grid until

5:49

you float them over the water using

5:51

a pole with a hook on it

5:54

and up to a conveyor belt where

5:56

it is drawn up and then slides

5:58

down into the insulated ice. orange

20:00

juice. The scientists couldn't get it quite

20:02

right. The powdering part kept going wrong.

20:05

But the freezing concentrating part

20:07

first worked. And

20:10

before you know it, Americans were

20:12

buying freezers, which were not common before,

20:14

very uncommon, just so that

20:17

they could have these cans of frozen

20:19

concentrate orange juice in the morning, dump

20:21

the can into the jug and add

20:23

water. I mean, that was what then

20:26

enabled the TV dinner boom, the fishstick

20:28

boom, all of that, because people now

20:30

had freezers. So these

20:32

spaces are filled with tanks for the

20:35

frozen orange juice. They're two stories high.

20:37

And in these tanks,

20:39

they're kind of like

20:41

oversized ice cream makers. They have a paddle

20:43

that just sort of swishes around. The

20:45

orange juice has been de-oiled,

20:48

de-aerated. And what

20:51

that means is it tastes of

20:53

sugar and nothing else. All

20:56

the things that make orange juice

20:58

taste of oranges are in

21:00

the oil and the volatiles that are stripped off

21:02

when you de-aerate it. So they

21:04

have to be added back. And

21:07

there's this one room at this

21:09

world's largest juice tank

21:11

facility. It's called the Flavor

21:13

Plus room. And that's

21:16

the only place in the entire facility

21:18

where you will smell orange. What

21:20

is amazing about this is you

21:23

add back in the flavors you took out,

21:25

but it's not an orange you would ever

21:27

find in nature because it is now

21:29

being tweaked to exactly what that

21:32

brand of orange juice tastes like, which

21:34

is how Minute Maid can taste exactly

21:36

the same every time you have it

21:38

all year round, or Tropicana can do

21:40

the same. They're brands. They're brands like

21:42

Pepsi or Coca-Cola. You can be loyal

21:45

to one and not the other. I

21:51

think all of us hold these kind of, we

21:53

hold these rough mental models of things in our

21:55

head. I, for example, was

21:57

like, yeah, sure, frozen from concentrate.

28:00

potential solutions out there,

28:02

although there's no money spent on it because

28:04

people haven't seen it as a problem really

28:06

until now. Refrigeration is beautiful

28:09

because it does everything and

28:11

we might have to get used to a

28:13

world where there isn't just a once-ice-fits-all solution.

28:15

I think that's a better world

28:18

because at the moment we just stuff things in the

28:20

cold and forget about them and we don't think about

28:22

them. Well it would be

28:25

great to think about fruit and vegetables as

28:27

living things. We could know a

28:29

little bit more about our food and

28:31

how far it's traveled and maybe

28:34

waste less that way. I don't know. I

28:36

think breaking down this monolith

28:38

would be a good thing. Whether

28:41

it's going to happen in a world where we

28:43

like a simple solution, I don't know. I

28:46

hope I get to like meet you

28:48

at the coatings banquet where we're eating

28:50

all the things everything is set out

28:52

on the table. It hasn't been refrigerated.

28:54

You know, I mean these things all

28:56

feel ridiculous like crazy science fiction and

28:59

you're even it feels sort of suspicious

29:01

like coatings. Like, ugh, what? Until you're

29:03

there and suddenly it's like

29:06

refrigeration. It just becomes something that

29:08

recedes into the background of your

29:10

life. I'm so down for

29:12

the coatings banquet. Nicky

29:15

Twilly is the co-host of the

29:17

Gastropod podcast and author

29:19

of a new book Frostbite. How

29:21

refrigeration changed our food, our planet

29:24

and ourselves. I cannot

29:26

recommend this book highly enough. It is

29:28

a page-turner. It is

29:30

fascinating and it changes

29:32

the way you think about every single

29:35

thing you eat. Go get it

29:37

now. Our

29:43

podcast is a co-production of Atlas

29:45

Obscura and Stitcher Studios. This

29:48

episode was produced by Alexa

29:50

Lin. The production team includes

29:52

Doug Baldinger, Camille Stanley,

29:54

Chris Naka, Johanna Mayer,

29:56

Baudelaire, Gabby Gladney, Manolo

29:59

Morales, Our technical

30:01

director is... Casey Holford. This episode was

30:03

sound designed and mixed by... Luce Fleming.

30:06

And our theme in end credit music is

30:09

by Sam Tindall. I'm Dylan Thuris, wishing

30:11

you all the wonder in the world. I

30:13

will see you next time. I,

30:16

myself, have been married for 56

30:18

years. Unfortunately

30:34

to four different women. You

30:38

can work out a whole lot of shit in

30:40

the hours of Target. Every

30:42

week on the Moth Podcast we share

30:44

stories that are funny, strange, heartbreaking, and

30:47

above all, true. I

30:49

refuse to fettle for being

30:51

the future when I

30:53

can be right now. Listen

30:57

along by searching The Moth wherever you get

31:00

your podcasts.