In previous centuries, every city of any size had to have a slaughterhouse in a fairly central location, and animals mostly walk there themselves.

You can imagine the noise, the smell, the runoff, and the

street congestion caused by, say, a herd of cattle proceeding down Main Street and understand why

these facilities were not pleasant neighbors. But meat production had to be local because the moment

an animal was butchered, there was a race against the clock to get it cooked or preserved

before it

spoiled. When we learned how to keep things refrigerated, first with ice, then with machines,

the shape of modern cities and indeed modern life was radically transformed. From KERA in Dallas,

this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. All of us have benefited from this refrigerated world.

It frees us from the dangerous cycles of feast and famine that most of humankind once endured every year.

And when we conceive of refrigerators as necessary but not very exciting home appliances,

we are seeing just the tip of an enormous world-changing iceberg that is the

cold chain. Nicola Twilly is co-host of the podcast, Gastropod, and she explores the fascinating

history of chilling food in her new book, Frostbite, how refrigeration changed our food,

our planet, and ourselves. Nicola, welcome back to think.

Thanks for having me. It's so good to be back.

This all started for you because you became obsessed with what is called the cold chain,

which I'm going to assume most of us have never even thought much about, despite its critical

importance in our lives. And the refrigerated warehouse is this remarkable

like missing link between farm or factory and market? Exactly. This obsession for me started a while

back when everything in the food world was all farm to table. You started seeing it on restaurants,

in newspapers, farm to table this, farm to table that.

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