Frostbite

Revolutionary Refrigeration

Award-winning Gastropod podcaster Nicola Twilley — also the co-author of Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, from The Black Death to the Space Age — offers a wide-ranging, business-based history of refrigeration. She explains that taking control of keeping food cold changed humanity’s relationship to the nature of food, and the how, where, and when of its production and distribution. 

Today’s refrigerated food supply chain — from home fridges to cooled warehouses, delivery vehicles, shipping containers, and supermarket cases — generally functions outside consumers’ notice, though it is critically important to them.