I'm David Ferrier, a New Zealander who ended up accidentally marooned in America, and I want to grasp what makes this country tick.

Now New Zealand has a lot of stuff that America has.

We have your cars, your TV shows, your movies, we have your

cheeseburgers and restaurants, Taylor Swifts and Beyonces. But one thing

New Zealand is missing, diners. What is the soup did you work?

It's the soup of the day.

I think I first clocked diners were a thing

when I watched Dumb and Dumber back in the 90s.

Mm-hmm.

That sounds good. I'll have that. And of course they're scattered all throughout

American pop culture. The first diner came along about 150 years ago and it

was attached to a horse so they could pull it around the town.

Things have changed a lot since then.

Diners are a way of life, a place together and talk and eat.

They feel like a safe space in a world that feels increasingly unsafe.

And to think diners were once banned in Buffalo, New York,

and Atlantic City because they were considered too rowdy.

There are tens of thousands of diners all across the US.

New Jersey has the most with 600, making it the diner capital of the world.

Guy Ferrearies made a career out of documenting diners, 35 seasons in 319 episodes worth.

From what I can tell, diners are the fabric that keeps the United States united.

So I want to find out how American diners became so entrenched in American life.

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