The History of Refrigeration

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – Episode: The History of Refrigeration

Release Date: February 11, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

---

Introduction to Refrigeration

In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into the intriguing history of refrigeration, exploring how this seemingly simple technology has revolutionized food storage, transportation, and even societal habits over centuries.

---

Early Methods of Cooling

The conversation kicks off around [02:12] as Chuck introduces the concept that refrigeration isn't just a modern convenience but has roots stretching back thousands of years. Early civilizations understood the value of cold storage:

• Ancient Practices: Before mechanical refrigeration, societies employed natural methods to keep things cold. For instance, Josh notes, “Cold keeps the flies away,” highlighting one of the earliest reasons for cooling—[04:16] – which was essential for preserving food and beverages.

• Chinese Innovations: Chuck shares, “Saltpeter, which is used in making gunpowder, was found to absorb heat when dissolved in water… one of the first artificial cooling methods was to make a little saltpeter bath” [08:19]. This early method utilized the principles of evaporation to lower temperatures.

---

Development of Artificial Refrigeration

Moving forward in time, the hosts discuss significant milestones in the evolution of artificial refrigeration:

• William Cullen’s Experiment (1750): Josh mentions, “William Cullen… did the first experiment on artificial cooling… it was pretty clever to use something like an artificial refrigerant rather than just, say, water” [26:27]. Cullen's demonstration laid the groundwork for future advancements.

• Jacob Perkins’ Refrigerator (1834): Chuck credits Perkins for developing the first working refrigerator using a vapor compression cycle, a fundamental principle still in use today [28:00].

• Refrigerants Evolution: The discussion touches on the progression of refrigerants—from toxic substances like ammonia and methyl chloride to the more environmentally harmful hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Josh highlights the environmental dilemma: “Hydrofluorocarbons… have a global warming potential, or GWP, of 14,800” [31:29].

---

Impact on Society and Economy

Refrigeration's advancements had profound effects on various aspects of society and the economy:

• Railroads and Shipping: Around [33:29], Chuck explains how refrigerated rail cars, known as “reefers,” transformed the meatpacking industry. This innovation allowed for the shipping of “dead meat,” making beef more accessible and affordable, thus doubling the cow population in the U.S. within 30 years [34:20].

• Dietary Changes: Josh discusses how refrigeration eliminated issues like "spring sickness" ([19:44]), a form of malnutrition caused by limited food variety during seasons, by enabling year-round access to diverse foods.

• Cold Storage Facilities: By [41:07], over 600 large cold storage facilities existed, primarily in urban areas, storing everything from produce to eggs, which supported the emerging practice of having eggs available year-round through selective breeding of chickens [42:31].

---

Evolution into Modern Refrigeration

The narrative transitions into the 20th century, showcasing how refrigeration became a staple in households:

• Iceboxes to Electric Refrigerators: Chuck reminisces about iceboxes—a common household item before electrical refrigeration [48:10]—and how George Eastman’s introduction of the first mechanical electric refrigerator in 1914 paved the way for modern fridges. By 1927, GE’s iconic "Monitor Top" refrigerator became widely popular [49:22].

• Cultural Shifts: Josh reflects on how refrigerators changed meal practices, allowing leftovers to be preserved without being transformed into stews, a significant shift in household food management [50:01].

• Frozen Foods Boom: The 1950s saw the advent of frozen foods like TV dinners and frozen orange juice, made possible by advancements in refrigeration technology [54:29]. Chuck emphasizes Betty Cronin’s pivotal role in developing the synchronized freezing process for TV dinners [55:17].

---

Modern Cold Chains and Globalization

In the latter part of the episode, Josh introduces the concept of the "Cold Web," a sophisticated global network enabling rapid transportation of perishable goods:

• Global Distribution: “We can catch a fish in Norway, send it off to China for processing, and then send it from China to the United States for eating all within a half an hour,” Josh marvels [56:36]. This illustrates the seamless integration of global supply chains facilitated by modern refrigeration.

---

Conclusion

Josh and Chuck wrap up by highlighting the incredible journey of refrigeration from rudimentary cooling methods to the complex systems that underpin today’s global food distribution. They underscore how refrigeration has not only changed how we store and consume food but also reshaped economies, diets, and daily lives across the globe.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Chuck Bryant [02:41]: “Refrigeration is one of those topics that has popped up in myriad ways in many episodes… this is one of those stuff you should know things where we're just gonna bring it all together and finally talk about the main topic.”

• Josh Clark [27:00]: “If you see a diagram and how it's explained on how a vapor compression refrigerator works… There's really just like four components to it… I finally got it, Chuck.”

• Chuck Bryant [34:20]: “The cow population in the United States more than doubled in 30 years after we figured out how to refrigerate meat or ship refrigerated meat.”

• Josh Clark [31:29]: “Hydrofluorocarbons… have a global warming potential, or GWP, of 14,800. That's a lot more than CO2.”

---

This comprehensive exploration showcases refrigeration's pivotal role in shaping modern society, emphasizing its technological advancements and far-reaching impacts.

Transcript

[T-Mobile Representative]

With T Mobile. No trendspotter has to deal with trendspotty service because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now. Keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of your virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service support in 90 plus days device knowledgeable carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.

[Oz Velozian]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck and Jerry. Chilly Willy Roland is here doing the recording, wearing a little red beanie, looking all cute. And this is stuff you should. You can see Jerry in my mind's eye.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm like, I don't see Jerry. She has a setting on her setup where it's like, show camera only to Josh and not Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

And she's wearing a little red beanie and looks like a mini penguin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But she has. You can't smell her. She has a button to allow me to smell her even though she's in la. And you know what it smells like?

[Josh Clark]

Miso.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep. But she may have gotten that miso from the fridge.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. All right. I see what you're doing. Nice work, Chuck. That was a good old stuff you should know segue. And in full, stuff you should know fashion. I stepped all over it, so it didn't actually work that well.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that's right.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. We are talking about refrigeration, which is why you brought that up. And again, nice work. This is one of those, I guess, topics that has popped up myriad ways in myriad episodes. So I mean, literally 30,000 ways in 30,000 episodes. And this is one of those stuff you should know things where we're just gonna bring it all together and finally talk about the main topic yeah, big.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks to Livia for her help with this. And this was a me idea because I think after our history of dentistry, I just sort of got turned on by the idea of the history of like certain just commonplace practices and things these days. And I maybe got something out of the fridge one day and was like, oh, man, refrigerators, they really changed the game.

[Josh Clark]

Did you say it to yourself out loud or were you just thinking this?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think I did. And Emily said, what the heck are you talking about? And of course they did. But I was kind of curious, like, I bet it's changed the game in more ways than I think. And that was sort of Livia's charge. And here we go with that. Cause I think it did change in more ways than I thought it might have.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I was gonna ask that. I had a follow up question. And then you just answered it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, it was satisfying. The result was for me.

[Josh Clark]

So I think initially you were thinking like refrigerators, like home refrigeration, maybe like warehouse refrigeration, fairly recent refrigeration. But Livia, like you said, who helps us with this, went, no, no. And wagged her finger and said, this stuff goes way, way back beyond this chalk. And you said, how did you get in my kitchen?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, yeah. So we're going to start early. Way, way before mechanical refrigeration, there was still refrigeration, which just means keeping something cold. A refrigerator is a mechanical version of that. But in olden times, one might even say ancient times, people were still trying to keep things cold. Like since we figured out that cold things lasted longer, people have been trying to keep things cold in various ways.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Cold keeps the flies away.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh Clark]

Flies don't like cold. So one of the things that people have long loved to do is cool down their drinks, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Mm.

[Josh Clark]

It's just something you take for granted these days. But that's one of the first uses people put cold storage or refrigeration to, which was to store ice so that they could chop it off with the ancient ice pick, probably made out of a bone or tusk or something like that, and put it in their drinks. And as we'll see, like that, that, that's just long been a desire of people. But whenever someone has access to ice in places you normally can't get ice, it's one of the first things they do to it. And it's also almost always a sign of wealth to start off for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I find it interesting that. And you know, I've traveled my fair share around Europe. And I was shocked early on in my 20s when a lot of the drinks came without ice. And they said, you know, that's sort of the European way. Because in Italy and ancient Greece and ancient Rome, the people that had the dough, they were putting ice in those drinks. And that's because iced drinks are better.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, across the board, to me, they are.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know everyone has their own thing. Some people have sensitivities, teeth wise and things like that. So I get that. But I've always been a super icy drink guy. I love them cold, cold, cold.

[Josh Clark]

And even if you're like into cocktails, like, you might not want ice in your drink, but I'll bet you used ice to chill that drink.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, unless you just like a straight up warm, room temperature, neat whiskey, which is your prerogative.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Of course, you need to be cooling those drinks down really well. Like, a cool drink isn't great. You gotta have it cold.

[Josh Clark]

I remember there's one of the lamest mixology trends that somebody tried to start and there was, it was around long enough for there to be some press on it and it just went away inevitably. It was room temperature cocktails. Oh, yeah. Like, why would you do that? You might as well make sure that every single one of them has to have celery bitters in it too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and I know we're gonna get people that say, like, I don't like things that cold. So even if they don't have teeth sensitivity. So again, people like what they like. But I'm an ice. Since I was a kid. A tall glass of the iciest ice water is the most refreshing thing I can put in my mouth.

[Josh Clark]

Huh. I just realized I drink room temperature water. I have a glass of it right here. So I guess I can't just stand with you a hundred percent there, Chuck. I'm sorry.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, actually, the studio is the only place where I don't drink iced water because it makes noise. So I have a, you know, out of the refrigerator, cooled, so it's still pretty cold.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Supposedly your body metabolizes room temperature water much more easily. But supposedly you also burn more calories warming water up in your body, so. All right, you're going to be torn.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I believe you because you said it.

[Josh Clark]

One other thing about ice and drinks, I think the best martinis are the ones that have you get them so cold that they have like a little shard of arctic ice on the top.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love that. But supposedly that's not the way. But I love that too.

[Josh Clark]

I love it. Too. It's so good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh.

[Josh Clark]

Ooh.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we're getting so sidetracked over these drinks. Not even through, like, the first paragraph here, but the martini, the ultimate martini, is when they do that and then they bring you the tiny, you know, little half pitcher sitting in a little tiny bowl of ice.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, I love that, too. And then also when they leave $5,000 in cash with you as well, for no reason other than ordering the $5,000 martini.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so people are cooling their drinks with ice in ancient times and places around the seventh century. Of course, the Chinese are always discovering the biggest and best ways to do things. Way back in the day, they found out that.

[Josh Clark]

Really, you hedged yourself right then.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I was like, oh, be careful. Saltpeter, which is used in making gunpowder, was found to absorb heat when dissolved in water. So they would. Maybe one of the first artificial cooling methods was to make a little saltpeter bath. And you would just sit a jar of whatever you wanted to keep cool in that cooler water.

[Josh Clark]

Pretty cool. Get it? Yep. That's going to happen many times. And I'll never do it on purpose, so I just apologize in advance. Yeah. One of the other things that people figured out pretty quickly is that when you have a liquid evaporating, usually water, as it evaporates, turns from liquid to gas, that phase change is what they call it. The eggheads call it a phase change. It requires energy, and typically it gets that energy to change phase from heat. My God, the heat. And it usually just pulls it from the surrounding air, which means that when a liquid turns into a gas, the air around it is cooler because it pulls that heat right out of the air to use it for the phase change. And if you have some way of moving that cooler water from around whatever vessel of. Of. Or, sorry, the cooler air from around the vessel of water that's evaporating. You have yourself a primitive air conditioning system that's sometimes called a swamp cooler. I saw.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I've heard that before. This is something that has been done in India for centuries and centuries. And, you know, it's not refrigerator cold, but if you're looking to keep something cool and something a little bit fresher, that's not a bad way to do it. For sure.

[Josh Clark]

No, for. For sure. And it has to be. This is the downside. It has to be a dry, hot place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

If it's muggy out, then it's not going to have much of an effect.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I also saw a swamp, ironically.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I thought that was weird, too. I Also saw one of the other really basic uses for is to dampen a towel and hang it in front of a breezy window. And as that water evaporates in the towel, as it dries off is what the lay people call it, the breeze pushes that cooler air into your house. And I realized that I was having trouble like envisioning this stuff or why anybody would go to the trouble. And I was like, oh yeah, before the kind of AC and refrigeration that we're used to, you had to go to all sorts of trouble. It's just so easy to take for granted these days. But to before this and in other places where they don't have ac, people would hang damp towels in front of a breezy window to get cooler. That's how desperate they were to cool down.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I imagine knocking something down a few degrees makes a big difference, you know, in the pre AC days, you know, for sure, burying things in the ground is also a good way to keep things cool. You know, like three to five feet down. You're going to find pretty consistent temperatures depending on where you are. If you're in the north, it can be 45, 50 degrees down there, more like 70 in the south. And you know that's Fahrenheit. And of course anyone who's ever spent any time camping or hiking knows as I did when I was a kid, my dad would build a little like cordoned off area with stacked rocks in a very cold mountain river to put like jugs of milk and stuff like that in when we were camping as a family.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there's things called spring houses or spring boxes depending on how big the structure is. But typically if you have a stream or a spring running through your home homestead, which from what I've read recently is like, like point number one that you want to make sure your homestead has as a source of fresh water, one of the cool things you could do with that is to build an enclosure around it. But first within the enclosure, what you want to build is like kind of like a widened area for the stream to flow into and then it kind of fills up and then it exits the other side of this widened area. So you narrow the channel of the spring or the stream, line it with rocks, line this box with rocks basically and it, it stays about half full year round of this nice cool mountain spring or mountain stream water. And you just keep your butter in there and crocs and stuff. So it's just like doing it in the stream, but you're basically making it a Little easier to store your things in there. You could put more stuff in it than you would if you just threw it in the stream like a total hayseed. Like even, even the mountainous of mountain people are like, you didn't go to the trouble of building a spring house for somebody who just throws it into the stream themselves.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So far I'm keeping track now you have name checked. Eggheads, lay people and hayseeds.

[Josh Clark]

And mountain folk.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and mountain folk.

[Josh Clark]

That's what we do here.

[Chuck Bryant]

So in the 17th century in Europe, they had official ice houses and they were, you know, you'd bring down ice from where you could get ice, like literal, just ice from the wild, like in Scandinavia. And they were using it to preserve food, obviously also for like the medical community would use it for different things. And also chilling those drinks still. But you know, you could use ice to treat burns and things like that to bring down a fever. You know, making things cooler was a big benefit to a doctor.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Also remember in our feed a cold, starve a fever, short stuff, we talked about how there was like a. Doctors viewed heat and cold as a duality of health. So yeah, if somebody was sick with one of the hot sicknesses, you would probably give them a cold drink. And that was considered as good as medicine is today.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or of course, any, you know, sprains and you know, muscle pulls, things like that. Heat and ice can be used in various ways.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

The rice method, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. So one other thing I want to mention real quick is we're talking about people like technologies that are like thousands of years old. There was something called a yakchal that Persians created that to listeners, may or may not sound familiar, depending on when we release the short stuff on it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So it's either just out or coming out soon. It's getting its own short stuff because it was just kind of too much there. It was pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But it was like an ancient Persian ice making Mach machine that dates back at least to 400 BCE, which is really impressive. But yeah, we'll get way more in depth on those in, in whatever short stuff we do. But the, the point is that people have been doing this for a really long time and they figured out some really ingenious technologies that harness natural processes to cool. And as we kind of progress through the technology, you'll see that we're basically doing the same thing, just a little more whiz bang, much more efficiently. It delivers much cooler air or water or whatever we're cooling, but it's still Basically the same premise as what we were doing thousands of years ago to keep things cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, totally. I think it's super cool. If you want to talk about, like, real ice and there's this really extensive, in depth, long New Yorker thing, which, you know, most New Yorker things are about Frederick Tudor, the Ice King, who's around in the 19th century. And he was the guy that was like, hey, we got all this ice up in New England. Like, our lakes are literally frozen, and why don't we try and make some money by shipping this ice out? He had, you know, he tried to get investors and they were like, I don't know. It seems like that stuff is gonna melt if you put it on a ship and try and send it to Cuba. And he said, oh, watch me. And he put some on a ship and sent some toward Cuba and it melted. And he was like, oh, man, they were totally right. But he kept at it and kept at it. And they used to use things like straw to help keep the ice a little more insulated. And he said sawdust actually works a whole lot better. And he and other people got in on the game and there was like American ice being shipped all over the world in the 19th century, which is. And making it there, which is kind of hard to believe.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And I have been racking my brain what episode we first introduced the Ice King in. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Igloos?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. I don't think so. I really don't remember what it was. But he popped up again later in our episode on Thoreau because one of the places where he was cutting ice from was Walden Lake. And Thoreau noted the Ice King cutting ice in. Or Walden Pond. Sorry, Mainers. While he was writing his book Walden. I think he appears in Walden.

[Chuck Bryant]

Two things you just name checked. Mainers. That's another one.

[Josh Clark]

And Henry David Thoreau, the original hippie.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's true. But one thing I did want to mention, and that's a nice little segue, was just to plug a little Instagram post I made recently. I was cleaning out my closet and I found a bunch of old schoolwork from elementary school. And while this part was from high school, I did a satire, an extra credit satire on Thoreau about someone who went to live deliberately in the woods. And the big joke at the end is they made it like 30 minutes or something. It wasn't the best comedy work for a ninth grader. It was okay, sure. But people should go check it out. Cause I Did a bunch of screenshots of various projects, a lot of space travel stuff and book reports, but one big one was on ancient Egypt. And I literally in the thing was like, hi, my name is Chuck Bryant and I'm going to be your guide through ancient Egypt. And at the end it was like, I hope you enjoyed your tour. And once again, signing off. I've been your guide and people are like, oh my God, you were doing stuff you should know as a fifth grader.

[Josh Clark]

That's awesome, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's really pretty cute. But you can go to Chuck the Podcaster Instagram to check that stuff out. People got a real kick out of it.

[Josh Clark]

For sure. I'll go check it out too.

[Chuck Bryant]

You would like it.

[Josh Clark]

And it's not like I avoid your Instagram. I just don't go on Instagram much.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, I know that, buddy. I know you're telling everyone else that, but I know that's not your jam.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So I talked about how like, the technology is really just kind of improved on ancient technology. The uses for this stuff too have really kind of been relatively the same. We haven't had a lot of stuff that we wanted ice for, aside from cooling our drinks, which is really honestly. Olivia turned up a mention of the King of Takua or Tekoa. I saw different spellings in what's now Syria. And he used it to ice his drinks almost 4,000 years ago. So, I mean, people have been doing that for a really long time. Another one is to store perishable food, like you said. Keeps the flies away. Right? And in doing these things as we've gotten better and better at started to have like really monumental, massive, sweeping changes on humanity. And here in America, one of the first changes it had we will talk about right after this.

[Carissa Thompson]

Stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

You should know.

[Aaron]

This is Carissa Thompson from Calm down with Aaron and Karissa.

[Cara Price]

Guys, Valentine's Day is not the time to wing it. You know what I mean? You need a solid game plan.

[Carissa Thompson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Cara Price]

Aaron knows this all too well. Jared, are you listening? The books company and wow. Your Valentine. That's right. W o wow. Your Valentine. Get 25% off your entire purchase. Boox. Makes it simple. You guys choose the quickie. Boo.

[Aaron]

Whoa.

[Cara Price]

Ha ha ha. With the click of a button, get their best selling bouquet right on Valentine's Day is the quickie she'll brag about for weeks. Wink wink.

[Aaron]

Or pick up from their collection of unique modern designs. Or go for their flower subscription. The number one husband life hack and be the hero every month. You really can't go wrong. This is so cute. Books aren't just any flowers. Their flowers are cut fresh from where they grow best, so you get bigger, brighter blooms that last longer. Some are even grown on the side of a volcano. That's incredible. She'll be blown away by how stunning they are.

[Cara Price]

Valentine's Day, you guys, it's February 14th again. Steve Jarrett. February 14th, right after the big game. So don't fumble the flowers. You get what we're doing here and get your order in.

[Aaron]

Now go to booze.com use my promo code. Calm down for 25 off. That's b o u q s.com promo code, calm down books promo code. Calm down.

[Oz Velozian]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Os Velozian, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued.

[Joshua]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Oz Velozian]

And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy.

[Carissa Thompson]

For a complex reality.

[Chuck Bryant]

How is it possible that the world's.

[Oz Velozian]

New energy revolution can be based in.

[Josh Clark]

This place where there's no electricity at night?

[Joshua]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Oz Velozian]

Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Carissa Thompson]

Lately I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminia. How about the one on borderline disorder? Better yet, worth order. Heard that one before, but it was so nice I learned it twice. Everybody listen up. Oh, it's Charles and Joshua. It stops. It stops. It stop. You should know. Wow.

[Josh Clark]

So, Chuck, I was talking about how refrigeration had massive sweeping changes as we got better at it. And in America, one of the first things it did was it allowed people to expand their diet some because unless you were in like a southern state or something like that, you did not have access to a lot of different kinds of food year round. Like during, like spring and summer, maybe even into fall a little bit, you would have things like like dairy and Poultry and. And meat. And then as winter veggies. Yes. And as winter started to set in, you had pickled cabbage, pickled neighbor who died that winter, like, pickled everything. Canning didn't even come around. I didn't know this until the 19th century. I thought it was really, really old. So, like, you really did not. So actually, you didn't have pickled anything, now that I think about it. You had, like, salted stuff, cured stuff, and a lot of it was grains, too. Right. Stuff you could store fairly easily. And then when we started learning how to preserve food with refrigeration and got better and better at it, like people, their diets just change radically. Like, apparently in the northern states, by the time spring came, you were so malnourished from a lack of niacin, vitamin B3 that you normally get from, like, poultry and fish and meat, that they had a name for it, spring sickness. Today we call it pellagra, but it's a type of, like, severe malnutrition that people would just annually get because they had that limited access to different foods. And then once we started being able to store and then more importantly, ship items by refrigerating it, then things really changed that spring sickness went away. And I'm also the first person in history to say the word refrigerating.

[Chuck Bryant]

Also, before people write in, they were definitely pickling things before they were canning. So you could still pickle things.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, cool. So, yes, you could pickle your neighbor then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they had jars and stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Well, what's the deal then? I mean, they just hadn't figured out how to use heat baths and that kind of thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

What, for canning?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. Maybe how to seal something properly would be my guess, but although, I don't know, maybe like wax sealing, maybe canning should be an episode. All right, and we can figure that out.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's figure it out.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can regale everyone with more tales of being drugged to the cannery as a child.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. I forgot about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is actually true. It makes me sound 100 years old, but that's actually true. So, yeah, when artificial cold came on the scene, that really, really, really changed the game. There was a physician and chemist from the University of galaska in the 18th century, 1748, named William Cullen, who, it looks like, did the first experiment on artificial cooling and kind of demonstrating how that was possible. And he, like you said, it was just sort of a version of what they had done in ancient times with those water in the clay Jars and exploiting that phase change from liquid to gas using the thermal energy. But he used instead of water, diethyl. Diethyl ether. And he would pump it out of a container and it would come to a boil and that heat would pull all the heat from the surrounding area just like it did back in old days. It was just sort of a different medium. And that would cool things down.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, this chuck was one of those episodes where I went near mad trying to understand like, the physics of the whole thing or even like the mechanical engineering aspects of this stuff. And it's got to be because my dad was a mechanical engineer by profession.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, like, I've got that little bug that I can't ignore. And I look all over for how William Cullen's thing worked and apparently no one knows because the same like four or five sentences are basically copy and pasted everywhere on the Internet.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's frustrating.

[Josh Clark]

So we do know that in the before, even 1750, he was the first person to demonstrate artificial refrigeration. It didn't go anywhere, but he showed that this was entirely possible and that it was pretty clever to use something like an artificial refrigerant rather than just, say, water. Although water is an excellent refrigerant in a lot of different applications.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. A guy, an American this time named Jacob Perkins, came along about 50ish years later in 1834. And he's credited basically for developing the first working what we would call refrigerator in his machine. And you know, again, it's just not too different from how they do it today. They just do it a lot better. But he used a vapor compression cycle. Again, it's all about the, the thermal loss of that phase change. But in this case, they're just exploiting it, you know, because if you move the pressure back and forth between the two, it keeps a constant cool.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Yeah. So it's just nuts. If you see like a diagram and how it's explained on how a vapor compression refrigerator works, which is almost certainly the kind of refrigerator you have in your home. There's really just like four components to it. And they're really doing some basic stuff to this, but it's more a question of, like, why, like, why would you put something into low pressure and heat it up for the next step to be to like depressurize it and cool it down and then you turn it into liquid up here? It's just, it doesn't make sense. It's almost just nuts. Like somebody just went crazy with a diagram. But apparently that's how it works. And it's all. I think it's like you said, it's just taking advantage of the different properties of lower pressure liquid or higher pressure gas. Like they can cool and heat and they're. They. I guess it puts off so much coolness or so much heat that it. It can be used to refrigerate. And then it passes through this other thing, like, I think a condenser. And that gives off the waste heat. That's what's under your fridge. And then, like, the evaporator cools everything down. Then I finally got it, Chuck. Okay, so I've been looking at it wrong the whole way. The refrigerator doesn't pump cold into your fridge. Right. The. The actual mechanical refrigerant process, what it does is it sucks heat out of your refrigerator. And once I finally understood that, I was like, I. I got it. Finally, I got it. Because this cooler refrigerant goes through a coil. And I thought, like, it was emitting cold and that that's how it cooled down. No, it's drawing any heat from there, kind of tricking the heat into joining the coil and leaving the fridge box cooler, which is what that refrigerant wanted all the time. It thinks that heat was a sucker for falling for it, but that's exactly what it does every time. And now the inside of your refrigerator is way colder.

[Chuck Bryant]

Amazing.

[Josh Clark]

I think it's kind of amazing too, because it's the opposite of what I always thought was going on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's super cool. I love that They've used various liquids over the years. Ammonia is one they used for a while, methyl chloride for a while. All of these things were toxic, though. So until they figured out a safer way, which they would soon enough, people would actually die. In the 1920s, there were cases where methyl chloride leaks happened, actually killed people. And then they said, you know what? Maybe we should come up with a synthetic substance that does basically the same thing. So they came up with dichlorofluoromethane, aka Freon. And until the 1990s, Freon was the go to. And then we said, hey, that's not so great either, because of our environment in the ozone layer. And so let's develop even newer, safer chemicals to keep things cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which hydrofluorocarbons are good for the ozone layer, but they're actually horrible as greenhouse gases. There's a rating of just how much of an effect like a chemical has on warming the atmosphere. And they use carbon dioxide, CO2 as a one. That's like the baseline, because we know how much it warms the atmosphere over 100 years. So it has a global warming potential, or GWP, of one carbon dioxide. Does chloro hydrofluorocarbons have a global warming potential of 14,800?

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

That's a lot more than CO2, if you really stop and think about it. And these are the refrigerants we're still using. These are the alternatives that we developed and started using in the 90s. So it's like we go from the frying pan into the fire. Whenever we try to do something environmental.

[Chuck Bryant]

It feels like, yeah, that's probably true. To me, this is where this episode gets super interesting. And this is kind of what I was really after when it came to the assignment, which is when things started moving around. Cooling systems started getting better and better. People were developing this stuff. And at the same time, railroads were growing and growing and expanding and expanding. And all of a sudden, people in the Midwest, farmers, could, you know, they were like, hey, I want to be able to ship my stuff and sell it to the East Coast. So the whole food scene was changing because of this. In the 1850s, they started. And this, to me is just, like, super ingenious. They started keeping railroad cars cool by using ice. So they would. They were called reefers. R E E F E R A reefer was a refrigerated, you know, rail car. And they had these big hatches in the roof. They would load just these huge, huge blocks of ice and then fans that were driven by, you know, powered by the turning of the axle on the train or on the train car, rather. And that just, you know, it just blew on him like a breeze past a cool towel in your window. And all of a sudden you had refrigerated train cars. They were lined in like, flax and sawdust, like we mentioned, sometimes dirt, sometimes cow hair. And even though people were a little bit at first, like, I don't know about this, the meat packing industry really got on board because they said, we've been shipping live cows across country for people to take care of when they get there. When we can butcher everything in one place and ship out this, what they call dead meat. It's disgusting. But that's what they called it, right?

[Josh Clark]

That's what sixth grade bullies call you, too, when they tell you to meet them in the playground at three.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dead meat.

[Josh Clark]

But that changed. That changed absolutely everything. This is when meat became, like a staple of the American diet. We talked a little bit about Chicago being the Epicenter of this in that, what did Americans eat before the FDA came along or something?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

[Josh Clark]

But all of a sudden, meat was much easier, much cheaper to ship, and they could ship it further and further. So they started supplying the cities with. With meat, and people started to be able to afford it. And that just. That was another huge change, not just for humans, but for cows, too, because apparently the cow population in the United States more than doubled in 30 years after we figured out how to refrigerate meat or ship refrigerated meat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible.

[Josh Clark]

That's a lot of dead cows.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's a lot of dead cows. It completely changed Chicago as a city, and it completely changed the way we were eating as a nation. All of a sudden, we had refrigerated cars also shipping produce. It wasn't just about the cows and the beef, even though it was a big part of it. But all of a sudden you could be like, hey, I'm growing this fruit in Florida, and have you ever had not just an orange in your stocking for Christmas? You ever had a big bag of oranges sitting around your house? Well, we're happy to provide that for you and us. Fruit, I think, was one of the first companies to get involved in sending their good stuff all over the place. And as a result, obviously, the prices really, really dropped. There was article in the New York sun in 1894 that talked about the price of pears went from 40 cents to two for a nickel in just a couple of decades, thanks to refrigerated cars.

[Josh Clark]

It's even more impressive when you adjust for inflation. So a Single Pear was $11 in the 1870s, and they were two for a $80 in the 1890s thanks to refrigeration. Did you ever get an orange in the bottom of your Christmas stocking? Because I never understood why until I started researching this.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, you never did.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, we always didn't. I was always like, why is there an orange in the bottom of this stocking? Making it seem like there's way more stuff in here than there actually is.

[Chuck Bryant]

I feel like I would remember that our stockings were a couple of little fun things, like a little top or some silly Putty, but usually just, like, socks and stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. I'm guessing that the reason I did and you didn't is because I was raised in the North. The Midwest, maybe. I'll bet that's why. And so it was like a. Like a Midwestern tradition, because we didn't have access to oranges, and you could eat an orange year round, basically, you lucky duck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Trains eventually, shipping wise, gave way to trucks. And they said, hey, now we got these trucks that we can, you know, refrigerate as well. And so we're not, you know, things were built around industries, entire industries, separate industries were built near rail yards because rail shipping was the only game, you know, for a long time. So. And I think it was in the. In that what did we eat? Episode when we talked about Chicago. Like, the whole meatpacking area was around the rail yards because they could, you know, they wanted to have it super close. So now all of a sudden, you could say, hey, stuff is, you know, it's really much cheaper to raise cattle or grow vegetables way out in the boonies. You can get cheaper labor, cheaper land. So now we can do that and just throw it on a refrigerated truck to get it across country.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. So, Chuck, little by little, as these, like, innovations in shipping stuff, meat produce, things that just could not make it from, you know, California to, oh, I don't know, let's say, Denver, without rotting or something. As we got better and better at this, something called the cold chain started to emerge and evolve. And that was basically how we move perishable items from one part of the country to another, thanks to this refrigerated stuff. And it was super primitive and separate. I think the. I don't know if you said it or not, but the very first private rail cars were these meat packers, refrigerated cars. They just did this on their own as, like, a great business move. But these things became so invaluable, and people became so hooked on having stuff available year round that they normally wouldn't, that it just became an institution, like a part of any growing, developing country's infrastructure. There was something called the cold chain?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, absolutely. There was an engineer early on who did not realize his dream, but he was sort of the first visionary in the mid 19th century. His name was Charles what? Tellier. Ooh, I nailed it. He was the guy that kind of envisioned this and said, hey, the cold chain is a thing that we could make a reality, and then we can sort of reorganize rationally on how we grow food and how we ship food. And it was his idea. He apparently died in extreme poverty because he never realized the dream to its fullest. But he tried. He actually got a British steamer ship and outfitted it with a refrigerator. Even named it Le. Le frigerique. Frigerifique?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, like, okay, like, fantastic, basically. But fantastic refrigerator is basically what it means.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that sounds like magnifique. But refrigerator, fantastic refrigerator concern. And this was in 1877, and he was bringing beef across the ocean from Uruguay to Paris. And when they got there, he was like, everyone's gonna love this. And the French were like, huh? You think I'm eating meat that's been dead for a month? Yeah, you're crazy. And we're gonna pass a bunch of laws that ban this kind of thing for the next 20 years and tell.

[Josh Clark]

Your screech I'm not crazy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Shut up. Take it back. Yeah, exactly.

[Josh Clark]

So, like you said, he died penniless, as you like to say. But. But his. His legacy lived on. Eventually people said like, okay, we can get used to this. But it took some. It took some selling, for sure. One of the other major things that helped establish the cold chain was not just shipping, but it had to, like, sit for a little while when it got to where it's going. Like, it's not like the train stopped at every. Every house for anyone who wanted eggs. Like, it went to one central destination and it unloaded its contents. And so as a result, cold storage had to develop. You remember Rocky? He helped train by punching huge sides of beef that would. That was part of the cold chain he worked in. At least I guess that's where he worked, was a cold storage place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, like a meatpacker storage facility, I think. By the way, second Rocky reference in here, that was another very subtle one. We'll see if listeners can pick that out.

[Josh Clark]

It already happened.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. Little Easter egg.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't pick it out. I want to know.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'm going to tell you off air. Ready? I'll tell you right now.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. Thank you for telling me.

[Chuck Bryant]

It sounded like you were acting just then and you kind of were, but I really did just tell Josh. But, yes, let's leave that as an Easter egg. Anyway.

[Oz Velozian]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cold warehouses started becoming a thing again. That sawdust insulation provided a lot of the, you know, insulation. I guess these were in the 1860s. And, you know, it wasn't like your refrigerator cold, but they were storing, like, fruit and produce. So it basically, it was like, hey, you don't get too warm and spoil is what they were trying to, you know, accomplish there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it didn't have to be frozen necessarily.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no, no. But by 1904, this was a legitimate thing. There were more than 600 huge storage, you know, cold storage facilities. I think 1,102 million cubic feet. And, you know, mainly based around cities, but they were holding everything from, you know, produce to namely eggs, because people wanted their eggs year round. And back then, before they started breeding chickens to lay eggs year round, they were basically laying in the spring and people wanted those eggs in the winter.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they really did breed them, Chuck, through selective breeding programs. There's something called the Red jungle fowl, which is a type of chicken wild chicken lays about 10 to 15 eggs per year. And like you said, normally in the spring, maybe in the early summer, that's just not enough if you want eggs year round. So the breeds that we developed, like the Leghorns, which is the top egg layer, the Champagne, they lay about 350 eggs per year, year round.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a lot.

[Josh Clark]

But before that. Yeah, you could just hang on to eggs. I almost said you could just sit on eggs for a while, thanks to cold storage.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. But, you know, we said the French were kind of grossed out by this. But it wasn't just the French. A lot of people had a hard time kind of coming around to this idea of eating things that had been around for a while, and false rumors spread that that stuff could make you sick, it could cause cancer. So in 1911, as a PR rebuttal, I guess, the Poultry Butter and Egg association had a cold storage banquet at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago, where they served an entire meal of foods that had been preserved through refrigeration to a lot of folks, including the mayor and the health commissioner, as sort of like, hey, here's where we are now. You don't need to be grossed out. And people said, okay, I may not be grossed out, but I'm also like, I have to get used to the idea of not buying the eggs from the farmer down the street or getting my milk from down the street or the produce from the farmer down the street. And so it took a while for people to come around to just getting food away from a source they really sort of knew personally and trusted.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that was one of the roles of the FDA and the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906 was to basically say, okay, we get why you don't trust some of these people, because some of them are actual total skills. Some of the people selling food, apparently one technique was to if you had a bunch of meat that was about a spoil, you just froze it and shipped it. And the person wouldn't be able to tell until they thawed the meat out and tried to sell it and you just rip them off. That was a big one. Or if you had a cold storage facility, if you're storing something for months, you need to keep it cold for months. There can't be, like, a week where everything breaks down and you just hang on to that stuff and sell it anyway after things get back online. And this is the kind of thing that, like, people in the US Were having to worry about. So thanks to the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906, and then later on, actual laws that gave it teeth, that kind of help set the stage for people to finally relax and be like, okay, I can deal with frozen food. Because it was like the. The GMOs of its day. Like, people were just like, it'll give you cancer if you eat frozen food. Like, it was like, people did not trust food that had been frozen.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. We should take our second break here at minute 42. And we're going to come back finally with home refrigeration right after this.

[Carissa Thompson]

Stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

You should know.

[Aaron]

This is Carissa Thompson from Calm down with Aaron and Karissa.

[Cara Price]

Guys, Valentine's Day is not the time to wing it. You know what I mean? You need a solid game plan.

[Carissa Thompson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Cara Price]

Aaron knows this all too well. Jared, are you listening? The books company and wow. Your Valentine. That's right. W o W. Wow. Your Valentine. Get 25% off your entire purchase. Boox makes it simple. You guys choose the quickie. Booq.

[Aaron]

Whoa.

[Cara Price]

Ha ha ha. With the click of a button, get their bestselling bouquet right on time. For Valentine' is the quickie she'll brag about for weeks. Wink, wink.

[Aaron]

Or pick up from their collection of unique modern designs. Or go for their flower subscription. The number one husband life hack and be the hero every month. You really can't go wrong. This is so cute. Books aren't just any flowers. Their flowers are cut fresh from where they grow best. So you get bigger, brighter blooms that last longer. Some are even grown on the side of a volcano. That's incredible. She'll be blown away by how stunning they are.

[Cara Price]

Valentine's Day, you guys, is February 14th again, Steve Jarrett. February 14th, right after the big game. So don't fumble the flowers. You get what we're doing here and get your order in. Now.

[Aaron]

Go to boox.com, use my promo code calm down for 25% off. That's b o u q s.com promo code. Calm down. Boox promo code. Calm down.

[Oz Velozian]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm OS Veloson one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued.

[Joshua]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Oz Velozian]

And often on Tech Stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy.

[Carissa Thompson]

For a complex reality.

[Chuck Bryant]

How is it possible that the world's.

[Oz Velozian]

New energy revolution can be based in.

[Chuck Bryant]

This place where there's no electricity at night?

[Joshua]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity.

[Oz Velozian]

So join us, listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Carissa Thompson]

Lately I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminia. How about the one on borderline disorder? Better yet, worth order. Heard that one before, but it was so nice I learned it twice. Everybody listen up. Oh, it's Charles and Joshua. It stops. It stops. It stop now.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so iceboxes had been a thing since, you know, at least the 19th century. They started to become more and more common. And this is, you know, a big wooden sort of cabinet in your kitchen, usually wood, and it was lined with something like a tin lining or zinc maybe, and the iceman would come around, deliver a big block of ice to your house, and that's how things were kept cool in the icebox. And if you are a Gen Xer or older, your grandparents may have even said the word icebox. My grandmother certainly did because she lived to be a hundred and was around. And when they called them ice and when they were iceboxes.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Not just call them. Yeah, there's also that whole excellent sub genre of desserts that are icebox like icebox cakes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. Lemon icebox pie. But finally, in 1914, we get our first mechanical refrigerator in the house. The domestic electric refrigerator or the D o m E L R e fridge made its debut. And this was still not a fully integrated refrigerator. It was a device that you got to put in your ice box to keep things cool and to keep that ice from melting.

[Josh Clark]

So yeah, it didn't take off. They weren't super reliable. They were pretty expensive, but not too Long later, a decade or so later, in 1927, GE introduced its refrigerator. It's nicknamed the Monitor Top because there's a big round turret on top of the refrigerator that gives it a very distinctive look. It looks like a robot fashioned by like a sixth grader. But Monitor refers to the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. And that's just. That was the nickname. I was looking all over for what General Electric called it, and they seem to have just called it refrigerator.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's kind of cool looking, if you want to look up a photo. I mean, it looks as described, leftovers. And this was something I was really curious about that that had been a thing. It was 1878, I think, when that term was coined. But leftovers back then meant like, you gotta eat this stuff the next day. Cause people didn't want their food to go bad. People didn't waste stuff like they do now and just throw stuff away if they didn't eat it. So dinner went into the breakfast or the lunch, or it went into a big pot the next day that was on the stove and you just had these big sort of stews of leftover things. Now that you had the mechanical electric refrigerator, all of a sudden you could preserve stuff and you could serve. You didn't have to transform something. You could like warm up and serve the same meal that you ate a few days ago. And that was a pretty radical thing at the time.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, for sure. Again, though, people were kind of like, I don't know about this. I was about to say fortunately, but related to that scarcity during World War II and World War I, but also the Great Depression basically said, hey, everybody, you can't just like be throwing food away. Like, we need to be very thrifty with food. And that really kind of gave leftovers a big boost also because the government came in and created propaganda campaigns to kind of persuade people to start eating leftovers more. Because again, thanks to your new handy GE refrigerator, you can do that kind of thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. It's pretty great. The, you know, the cold chain is what really changed the game early on. But it also changed, like, not just availability, but like literally creating new kinds of foods, like inventing new foods. Iceberg lettuce is so named because it could hold up to being shipped on ice.

[Josh Clark]

And it has the same taste as an iceberg.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, man, I'll go to bat for iceberg lettuce. Really?

[Josh Clark]

Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I think it's unfairly labeled as junk and like iceberg in with some arugula and a little romaine and some leafy greens. Throw in a little iceberg. Cause it's so crunchy and you don't get that kind of texture from. I mean, maybe a little bit, but it's the crunchiest lettuce to me. So I think it gets a very snobby sort of. People look down on it for bad reasons is my take. But I like a little iceberg.

[Josh Clark]

Tell them what John waters called iceberg lettuce. I thought that was great.

[Chuck Bryant]

The polyester of lettuce. Yeah. But I was also raised a lower middle class kid who grew up eating iceberg lettuce. And so.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I was too.

[Chuck Bryant]

It has a fond place in my heart for that reason.

[Josh Clark]

I understand. I hated salads, so maybe that's why I hate iceberg lettuce. Because that's all we got was iceberg as well. And like French dressing or something like that, or ranch. And that was it. And you ate it and you liked it and you shut up about it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would party on an old school 80s iceberg salad so hard.

[Josh Clark]

For real. Like even when you were a kid, you would eat that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, that's the only kind of, you know. I mean, it's probably not even a vegetable, but I considered it a vegetable. I didn't like a lot of vegetables, but I would eat a salad.

[Josh Clark]

So that's funny. I hated salad so much, I would refuse to be served anything except for some iceberg lettuce and some carrots. And I wouldn't even eat that. No salad dress and nothing. Like whenever everyone else was finished, if I was still eating my salad, I had to stay at the table and finish it. And so at that time, I would just start slowly putting it bite by bite under the credenza behind me. But then I was shortsighted enough. I didn't go back and clean it out. So every few months, like, the credenza would get moved and there'd be a pile of like desiccated iceberg lettuce and carrots.

[Chuck Bryant]

The other thing I like to use iceberg for now is like, if you're making something in a lettuce cup, iceberg works really well.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like chicken larb or, you know, something like that.

[Josh Clark]

Totally. I'll agree with you on that.

[Chuck Bryant]

So frozen foods obviously wasn't a thing for a long, long time. But finally in the 1950s, they said, hey, you know what? We can cool things, we can freeze things, we can freeze meals and we can freeze orange juice and I know we've already talked about TV dinners and concentrated frozen concentrate orange juice, but those were two really big game changers, only made possible for advances in refrigeration and freezing and shipping.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, and while we're on it, I believe in our, like Food Origins episode. I don't remember what it was, but we talked about the TV dinner and we totally credited Jerry Thomas, a salesman for Swanson, as coming up with the idea. And since then, it's become much clearer that Jerry Thomas might have had almost nothing to do with this, and that the real hero was a 21 year old bacteriologist named Betty Cronin, who was the one who not only she might not have come up with the idea, I think she said one of the Swanson sons did, but she was the one who figured out how to make it work. And to make these meals that are different foods entirely, that all cook at the same time and come out the way that they're supposed to. That was all her.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Betty Cronin, unsurprisingly, not forgotten, but doesn't get nearly the accolades she should have gotten.

[Josh Clark]

No, she does now, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Way to correct the record, friend. So, yeah, TV dinners. I mean, I would go listen to that episode. It was pretty great. But it definitely came along as TV was coming along and it was a big deal. And even though, I mean, there are still TV dinners sort of like that. But if you go in the frozen food, I mean, I don't get any of this stuff. But if you go to the frozen food section, I mean, you can get almost any kind of meal frozen these days.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Even iceberg lettuce? Oh, yeah. That's not what that means anymore.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no. I'm not gonna let someone ruin hawking up a loogie for everybody. That's one of life's great pleasures.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. There's one other thing I wanted to mention. So the cold chain is now so diverse, and there's so many different versions of it all working together. It's now called the Cold Web. And Olivia gives a great example of what we can do now. We can catch a fish in Norway, send it off to China for processing, and then send it from China to the United States for Eaton. All within a half an hour.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's amazing.

[Josh Clark]

Well, maybe longer than that, but still, it is still amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got anything else you should do an episode on? Gullibility.

[Josh Clark]

Nice idea. You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

I got 10, 12 more minutes worth of material. Do you mind just sitting there no, let's do it. Since Chuck said let's do it, I think it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is about the Pink House. Hey guys. I can't believe there is finally a subject I can share some information about. Every year I would visit my cousins who live about 20 minutes away from Plum island and heading to the beach was a yearly activity. As we all grew, we had our own families. The yearly gathering at Plum island got bigger and better and passing the Pink House has always been the tell that you were just a few minutes away from the beach. I grew up hearing the same story you guys shared about it being a spite house and believed it to be true as it truly sits alone on the salt marsh. It's pretty weird looking. Just last month though, being a new homeowner on the island, I was sent a town newsletter in which a tribute to the Pink House gave a different history. I've attached the article for you to read. While it wasn't quite built with spite, there seems to have been some spite in the story. Our family loves the show and even flew to Boston to take our two adult girls who live in Boston to see you live. Thanks to you, we are walking local experts on the Biosphere 2. And that is from Amy Sandy, who is wonderful.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, thanks a lot Amy. Number one, thank you for coming to see our show. And number two, congratulations on your new house.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And number three, thank you for sending us a delightful email. And if you want to be like Amy, you can send us an email too to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Oz Velozian]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology. From high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.