
Frostbite
How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
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Narrated by:
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Nicola Twilley
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By:
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Nicola Twilley
About this listen
"Engrossing...hard to put down."—The New York Times Book Review
“Frostbite is a perfectly executed cold fusion of science, history, and literary verve . . . as a fellow nonfiction writer, I bow down. This is how it's done.”—Mary Roach, author of Fuzz and Stiff
An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food—for better and for worse
How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we’ll find something fresh and ready to eat? It’s an everyday act—but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement. The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching a new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but seasonality and geography. Tomatoes in January? Avocados in Shanghai? All possible.
In Frostbite, New Yorker contributor and cohost of the award-winning podcast Gastropod Nicola Twilley takes listeners on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting off-the-beaten-path landmarks such as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s orange juice reserves. Today, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment.
In the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but the costs are catching up with us. We’ve eroded our connection to our food and redefined what “fresh” means. More important, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a US-style cold chain, Twilley asks: Can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we? A deeply researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, Frostbite makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge—and how our future might depend on it.
©2024 Nicola Twilley (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“[Nicola Twilley] tells the fascinating story of refrigeration and tracks its effects on eating habits, family dynamics and much else. Along the way, she skillfully introduces us to the people who helped make refrigeration a key feature of everyday life and who now work at the chilly front lines of the modern economy.”—Wall Street Journal
“Just the fact that we can keep things cold—food, ourselves, drink—changes everything about the way we live . . . It’s smart and it’s fun . . . A book about cold is the perfect summer book.”—Science Friday, Best Science Books of Summer 2024
“Twilley’s style weaves storytelling with a series of well-timed narrative combination punches . . . This is bravura technique. You read through once, not unappreciatively, and then—boom—you go back and read it again, your mind racing to embrace the ramifications . . . Still, Frostbite wears its politics lightly, trusting the reader to conjure their own indignation. The style is accessible, informative and infectiously readable. Yet all the time, the book is quietly inspiring a desire for change. You will not know you’ve been evangelised but you will reach a point where you walk into the fruit and veg aisle on your weekly shop, look at a carton of 'fresh' orange juice or pick up a vac-packed chicken and feel overcome with a kind of despairing nausea.”—Financial Times
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Story
After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center, New Yorkers and Americans faced a critical set of questions: What should be done with the site? Could the towers be replaced? And how best to memorialize those lost on that day? For Larry Silverstein, a lifelong New Yorker who had signed a lease for the properties just a few months before the attacks, the answer was clear: America had to rebuild as quickly as possible.
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Starts great before it morphs quickly into Larry Silverstein paying homage to himself
- By Xj517 on 10-11-24
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The Walls Have Ears
- The Greatest Intelligence Operation of World War II
- By: Helen Fry
- Narrated by: Jean Gilpin
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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At the outbreak of World War II, MI6 spymaster Thomas Kendrick arrived at the Tower of London to set up a top secret operation: German prisoners' cells were to be bugged and listeners installed behind the walls to record and transcribe their private conversations. This mission proved so effective that it would go on to be set up at three further sites - and provide the Allies with crucial insight into new technology being developed by the Nazis. In this astonishing history, Helen Fry uncovers the inner workings of the bugging operation.
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inresting look into a secret world.
- By Christopher Daniels on 05-22-20
By: Helen Fry
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The Unidentified
- Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained
- By: Colin Dickey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational - in fringe - is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures. Enter Colin Dickey, cultural historian and tour guide of the weird.
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Skeptic's Analysis of Weird America
- By Adrian on 11-23-20
By: Colin Dickey
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Money for Nothing
- The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich
- By: Thomas Levenson
- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In the heart of the Scientific Revolution, when new theories promised to explain the affairs of the universe, Britain was broke, facing a mountain of debt accumulated in war after war it could not afford. But that same Scientific Revolution - the kind of thinking that helped Isaac Newton solve the mysteries of the cosmos - would soon lead clever, if not always scrupulous, men to try to figure a way out of Britain’s financial troubles.
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Financial innovation's first song of the siren.
- By Michael Barnett on 09-06-20
By: Thomas Levenson
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The Urge
- Our History of Addiction
- By: Carl Erik Fisher
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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As a psychiatrist in training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher found himself face-to-face with an addiction crisis that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of his condition, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that our society’s current quagmire is only part of a centuries-old struggle to treat addictive behavior.
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Nailed it
- By Paully on 11-23-22
By: Carl Erik Fisher
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Cities
- The First 6,000 Years
- By: Monica L. Smith
- Narrated by: Monica L. Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A sweeping history of cities through the millennia - from Mesopotamia to Manhattan - and how they have propelled Homo sapiens to dominance.
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Written for a child
- By virginia on 07-22-21
By: Monica L. Smith
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Our Moon
- How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
- By: Rebecca Boyle
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Many of us know that the Moon pulls on our oceans, driving the tides, but did you know that it smells like gunpowder? Or that it was essential to the development of science and religion? Acclaimed journalist Rebecca Boyle takes listeners on a dazzling tour to reveal the intimate role that our 4.51-billion-year-old companion has played in our biological and cultural evolution.
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Interesting but with annoyances
- By J. Pegg on 04-13-24
By: Rebecca Boyle
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The Quiet Before
- On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
- By: Gal Beckerman
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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We tend to think of revolutions as loud: frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fueling them have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces, in the small, secluded corners where a vanguard can whisper among themselves, imagine alternate realities, and deliberate about how to achieve their goals. This extraordinary book is a search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and a warning that—in a world dominated by social media—they might soon go extinct.
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Thoughtful Survey with No Magic Solutions
- By Haim Watzman on 04-25-22
By: Gal Beckerman
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Superior
- The Return of Race Science
- By: Angela Saini
- Narrated by: Hannah Melbourn
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science. If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas and considered race a social construct, it was an idea that still managed to somehow survive in the way scientists thought about human variation and genetics. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, Angela Saini shows us how, again and again, even mainstream scientists cling to the idea that race is biologically real.
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Lots of great info, underwhelming narrative
- By Amazon Customer on 04-08-21
By: Angela Saini
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Fantasy Island
- Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico
- By: Ed Morales
- Narrated by: Sean Duffy
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite, a Cold War Caribbean showcase, a dumping ground for US manufactured goods, and a corporate tax shelter. He also shows how it has become a blank canvas for mercenary experiments in disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change, hamstrung by internal political corruption and the US federal government's prioritization of outside financial interests.
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Gringo Narrattion
- By shakira julia on 02-08-21
By: Ed Morales
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We Were Illegal
- Uncovering a Texas Family's Mythmaking and Migration
- By: Jessica Goudeau
- Narrated by: Jessica Goudeau
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Over seven generations, Jessica Goudeau’s family members were church elders, preachers, Sunday school teachers and potluck organizers. Her great-grandfather helped establish a Christian university in Abilene, Texas, which she attended along with her grandparents, parents, siblings, and cousins. Her family's legacy—a word she heard often growing up—was rooted in faithfulness, righteousness, and the hard work that built the great state of Texas.
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Very good read
- By Physicist on Violin on 08-11-24
By: Jessica Goudeau
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Untold Power
- The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson
- By: Rebecca Boggs Roberts
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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While this nation has yet to elect its first woman president—and though history has downplayed her role—just over a century ago a woman became the nation’s first acting president. In fact, she was born in 1872, and her name was Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. For the first time, we have a biography that takes an unflinching look at the woman whose ascent mirrors that of many powerful American women before and since, one full of the compromises and complicities women have undertaken throughout time in order to find security for themselves and make their mark on history.
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Readers voice lacked Edith’s strength
- By Heidi on 08-01-24
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I Want You to Know We're Still Here
- A Post-Holocaust Memoir
- By: Esther Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer, Esther Safran Foer
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching.
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Interesting but…
- By mk on 08-23-21
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What You Have Heard Is True
- A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
- By: Carolyn Forché
- Narrated by: Carolyn Forché
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
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Beautiful story
- By Norhilda on 05-09-19
By: Carolyn Forché
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Enemy of All Mankind
- A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Henry Every was the 17th century’s most notorious pirate. The press published wildly popular - and wildly inaccurate - reports of his nefarious adventures. The British government offered enormous bounties for his capture, alive or (preferably) dead. But Steven Johnson argues that Every’s most lasting legacy was his inadvertent triggering of a major shift in the global economy. Enemy of All Mankind focuses on one key event - the attack on an Indian treasure ship by Every and his crew - and its surprising repercussions across time and space.
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Slow
- By Gary V Howell on 06-07-20
By: Steven Johnson
refrigeration IS fascinating!
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Very good book, narration distracts
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Fascinating
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So interesting
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Incredibly fascinating
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Also why Whole Foods cost more. Than Walmart for the same products.
Influences
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Excellent listen. So much depth
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Professional approach
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The content of the book stood out the most.
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New ideas about history.
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