Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Refrigerators

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcasters Miles Gray (The Daily Zeitgeist, 420 Day Fiance) and Rivers Langley (The Goods From The Woods, The Corona Diaries) for a look at why refrigerators are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

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Again, that's code SIFPOD, S-I-F-P-O-D, at checkout at their website, Libro.fm. And then one more thing to say, the patrons and backers of SIFPOD on Patreon do not hear these kinds of promotional messages. They also get many, many other benefits from there, but if you would not like to hear these kinds of messages, head to SIFPOD.fun, become someone who makes this entire podcast possible by supporting it. Oh, and hey, speaking of this podcast, here's a new episode. Refrigerators.

Known for being cold. Famous for that humming sound. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why refrigerators are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guests today are Miles Gray and Rivers Langley.

I hope you already know Mr. Miles Gray as the co-host of The Daily Zeitgeist with Jack O'Brien. That is a wonderful podcast in many, many ways. Also has really helped add some songs to this one, as you will hear. Miles is also co-host of 420 Day Fiance with Sophia Alexandra. If you're a fan of that TV show or behavior or both, highly recommend it. Check it out. And then Rivers Langley is a fantastic stand-up comedian. He's also co-host of the podcast Goods from the Woods. Also created a variant of it called the Corona Diaries for the last several months. Just such a funny and smart show and also connects to the South in ways I think are great.

Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Miles recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva, and Keech, and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Rivers recorded this on the traditional land of the Muskogee or Creek people, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about refrigerators. You will immediately hear about our relationship to them. Then you'll hear astonishing history and science. Also, one audio heads up, like partway through the episode, Rivers' mic had an issue. So he's on his mic most of the way. And then partway through,

it's going to switch to the Zoom internet call backup. It sounds totally legible. It sounds totally good. And you will enjoy the episode still. I just try to give people a heads up whenever the audio changes at any point. Because, like, you might think it's your speakers. I don't want that to happen. So it's not you. It's the podcast. And sounds totally good.

You're going to have a great time. So please sit back or heave another block of ice into what you call a refrigerator because you live 100 or more years ago. Either way, here is this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Miles Gray and Rivers Langley. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Miles Rivers, thank you so much for being here. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Everyone has refrigerators, but either you can go first. How do you feel about the refrigerator? Well, you can look at me and see exactly how I feel about it.

I'm a thick boy. I'm a curvy man. So I rely deeply on the fridge. I love it. Not to interrupt you, but Rivers has a very large wooden cabinet behind him. And for a second, I thought you meant see the wooden refrigerator behind me. And I was going to be astounded. I was going to be amazed that that exists. that that exists. Fancy.

But no, I'm also, you know, very interested in history and things like that. So I'm excited to talk about the history of the fridge because I do often think about how much it would suck to just have to rely on, you know, putting your meat

in a snow bank or something terrible like that. I very much appreciate the fridge, although I don't really quite know the physics behind it. I just know that it's a box filled with probably deadly chemicals that keeps my toaster strudels edible. I love refrigerators. And it wasn't until you asked me to do the show to talk about refrigerators that I hadn't really realized how important refrigerators are to me.

How much I've seen, I've looked at them as not only as someone who was literally putting out a joint as I started talking, you know, a lot of my, a lot of my favorite things are inside of the refrigerator. But not only that, like it's also become a status marker symbol for me, too. And there are moments in my life that I look at a refrigerator of being like, oh, I aspire to have, I want to be this level refrigerator. Oh. What would you say is the top? Is the top a stainless steel French door with the- I mean, yeah, the Nancy Pelosi $30,000 one, that's a little too much. Filled with the Jenny ice cream. Filled with the good ice cream. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, the Nancy Pelosi $30,000 one, that's a little too much.

Filled with the Jenny ice cream. Filled with the good ice cream. Yeah, exactly. Because I don't want to guillotine my own head off because I have a car or a refrigerator worth more than most people's lives. I'm simple. I never had a refrigerator that had ice maker or water filtration in the door. Anything like that. I just straight stacked run-of-the-mill refrigerators. And I would go to friends' houses who had built-ins, who had Sub-Zero.

I was like, oh, man, if only my parents had it together a little bit more. That could be us. So the first time I was able to buy my own refrigerator, which was only in the last two years, I got one with the ice maker and everything and it felt like such an achievement for me that i was like this is it i'm here baby and i can't go back what i was gonna ask y'all this what is the biggest refrigerator you've ever seen oh like in a house anywhere because i've got i think i want to say i've got everyone beat but

maybe maybe y'all are going to be stunting on me i don't know the largest refrigerator does a hockey rink count yeah uh i mean i suppose yeah yeah i guess uh i think the largest when i used to work on that show hell's kitchen there was a gigantic commercial walk-in oh wow that i was like this is a refrigerator and i was like oh right people die by like not like getting stuck in these things uh but it wasn't like the biggest thing you know it was like but it was it was like the size of a room yeah uh dude i i used to have a very stupid job where i worked at a grilled cheese sandwich store and before the grilled cheese sandwich store was open they set up a replica kitchen inside of a warehouse in the produce district in downtown la just off alameda and the warehouse where we had our like mock-up kitchen had a gigantic refrigerator that you could literally drive an 18 wheeler into oh wow like it took up

most of the factory and and we had our entire operation in you know one tiny corner right so it's so funny it was like oh yeah go on the walk-in and uh and and get me some cheese and you walk in the walk-in and it's like walking into the heart of a cathedral it's just like this massive and then one day we came in and it was just leaking and because of its size it's leaking it was essentially just a torrent like a fire hydrant just pouring water down in one corner but it was all the way on the other side so it didn't even affect us wow so that's how big this thing was all right what about you alex i know you got one to top that one well the room i meant no i don't i i've never worked in food service i feel like i feel like as a refrigerator gets bigger like eventually it's nefarious you know what i

mean like i don't mean any home ones are that way but the one you describe rivers i i'm almost imagining it being used to store aliens or something right like once it's big enough it's like what are they up right what are they trying to accomplish here yeah well and and miles was uh you know partaking in uh in a joint a second ago as he said and that reminds me of course, because I I've almost exclusively worked in food service my whole life in the restaurant. When it's time to get high, everybody will go into the walk in fridge or freezer. And it is referred to in restaurant parlance as a safety meeting. Safety meeting.

So, you know, they'll be like, hey, safety meeting in the fridge. Yeah. And so you go into the fridge and get a little high. And so like on production sets, it would always be the gaffers and electricians who had alcohol on them on set. And that's also in production, on set production, safety meetings was also the place for whatever team you were on on set to go get hired drunk by the trucks.

Nice. But yeah, the safety meeting is a time-honored tradition i think across many industries there's something about like i mean i guess it's more of the freezer than the fridge but there is something about smoking in the freezer that just it just feels right you know yeah right especially if it's like a hot summer night especially like because i'm from the deep south so like working in alabama you're just sweating the minute you get out of the shower and then you have to go deliver pizzas and you're just like and there is just something about it that's nice you know it feels right it feels like justice it does you're on the clock the the sweat on your neck

is starting to freeze a little bit exactly but then you inhale the cool air and the relief of THC. Oh, my goodness. Well, I love that. And I think from here we can get into things about refrigerators. On every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And that is in a segment called Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, math time. And the name was submitted by Johnny Davis.

We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. I might put in tambourine later. I don't know. I haven't decided. Wait, Johnny Davis? I know that's not a zeitgang, Johnny Davis, too.

It is. This person contributes a lot of AKs. I sees you, Johnny. It's probably him, yeah. Can't escape. He's a good wordsmith. Yeah, and this segment has benefited a lot from the Daily Psych guys. Please listen to it, folks, if you don't.

But yeah, it's nice to have the songs keep them coming. Christy Yamaguchi-Main came through the other day. It's very exciting. Oh, yeah. Very good. Oh, reliable. But it is math time. As that song said, we have numbers.

The first number here is more than 99.5%. One more time. That's more than 99.5%. Almost 100. That's the amount of US households that have a refrigerator, according to census data cited by the Atlantic, which is not super surprising to me. I feel like it's like automatic that homes have them apartments anything right yeah well except in los angeles where it is not a law that the apartment has to have a fridge right so when i first moved into my apartment i was like oh home sweet home you're like where's the fridge like oh you don't have one yeah and it didn't have one and unfortunately uh my my craigslist roommate uh worked at best buy so he got us a deal on an on a fairly nice one but uh yeah there's no law in la for stoves or fridges no no no we try and make it as hard as possible for a working person to survive here it's it's one of the oh you got to look the working they they need to know their place is at the bottom. They're going to have to use a hot plate and a mini fridge for a little while. Or an old empty U-Band can and some Tinder kindling you found.

What, you don't got an igloo cooler? Oh, wow. You don't want to buy ice every day? That's actually my favorite personal fridge story is when i first moved to la it was me and my friend from massachusetts and his dad like doing home scouting and the first place we looked that we ended up moving into it just didn't have a fridge because that's a thing in la yeah and like we finished touring it and we were like, thank you, person. Thank you. And as soon as we got out there, my friend's dad was like, this is a scam.

This is someone, this is some kind of grift. You cannot take this place. There's no refrigerator. It's definitely illegal. I'll agree with him. LA rental market is a scam. Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. No lies detected.

rental market is a scam oh yeah yeah sure yeah no lies detected linda another number here is 23 and 23 is it's like the same bank of stats but it's how many u.s homes have multiple refrigerators two or more so a little less than a quarter in the u.s have like the fridge and then bonus fridge i don't know if you guys ever had that. I did not have that growing up, but, but it's a nice thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. My, uh, my parents, uh, you know, they got a new fridge and the old one worked, it was just noisy. And so they put it outside and, uh, you know, they refer to it as the redneck fridge because that's,

that's the thing rednecks do is they have fridges plugged up outside, uh, at least down here in Alabama. And so, yeah, in their old house, we had a redneck fridge. And it's great. That's where you keep beverages. That was, you know, keep the beers and cokes and stuff like that in there. When you say outside, do you mean in the garage or, like, outside? Like, no roof over it?

It was like an overhang, like the porch, I guess. It wasn't a garage, but it was the porch but yeah similar concept i guess the garage fridge you know maybe not maybe not redneck but uh you know that's more of a uh i don't know that's that's the the bachelor's degree the upper 50 yeah yeah there we go that's the it's the associate's degree fridge not the redneck fridge yeah upper 48 got those yeah but yeah i don't know i never had one so again so this goes back to the fantasies i've had about refrigeration you know my mom is from japan and for even like she in the early like early 50s wasn't having that much refrigeration because you know because world war ii um so noties wasn't having that much refrigeration because, you know, because of world war two.

Um, so not, it wasn't quite booming like that yet. Um, and so like a lot of the things were sort of seen as like sort of extraneous, unnecessary items, uh, like an ice maker, things like that. So I remember I had this neighbor down the street who basically showed me what like being american is like really about and that was like you know tuna helper it was you know spaghettios i didn't i've never had any of that stuff no soda at my house and then the garage fridge and i remember the first time i was like this refrigerator only has soda yeah and i don't understand this is uh is this a store like why would you have this many things are you sell like i really thought they were selling them this is like when i was

seven or eight oh and come to find out i'm like well they just have a huge catholic family and yeah they're drinking about 78 sodas a day between like six kids so i was like okay this all makes sense but i always longed for like that also too to just have like a refrigerator just for the drinks still don't have that yet though i'm not there yet did you did you grow up with any kids who had the snack drawer oh yeah that's a similar concept there there was a kid in my neighborhood who had the snack drawer and his parents were like barely ever home and there were times where i'll just say it i mean the statute of limitations has passed we would just walk in his house and eat

rice krispy treats out of his snack drawer and then leave without even saying what up to him they never noticed i will be patching him in now folks please welcome rivers old friends it's gonna be pretty mad but it needs to be done. I got grounded and missed a baseball tryout because you could have played for the Yankees. Oh, no. Still thinking about that, huh? And the next number here is 17.5 cubic feet in volume. And I know no one knows what a cubic foot is, but that's the number for

you. It's also about half a cubic meter. But the point is, that is the average size of a U.S. refrigerator, and the U.S. leads the world in average refrigerator size. The Canadians are closely behind us. And then according to Jonathan Rees, professor of history at Colorado State University Pueblo, who's written a history of the refrigerator, the average European fridge is somewhere between half and two thirds the size of an American or Canadian one. We just go bigger. That's incredible, man. It's always so funny because in pre-pandemic times, I don't know, my once and future job in addition to stand-up comedy was doing private tours of L.A. And that is the first thing that you hear from anybody coming from another country is just like, y'all have the biggest food I've ever seen.

And you don't even consider it until you're talking to a guy who's just like, yeah, our plates are like half your size. Yeah. And I'm just like, yeah, our plates are like half your size. Yeah. And I'm just like, yeah, we call that a tea cup, tea saucer, bro. But yeah, that's what we do out here. It's funny because, yeah, when I'm going to Japan too, like as a kid, I would spend my time half in the States, half in Japan. The refrigerators were so like tiny, but like you're really good about the space, but it's also like packed in because if you again

if you have a big family like in a small fridge it's like you just got to be good about your spatial reasoning yeah keeping it packed properly but it's also like the place and i was like this actually makes more sense like why don't we have the same why aren't we taking the technology of japan where it's like there are several like drawers like refrigeration drawers rather than like and there are door cabinet style versions. And I'm like, this makes sense because certain things have different needs rather than just like a plastic see-through box.

That's like, I don't know, crisper. Yeah. Which, which really should be called the ruiner. Yeah. Let's be real.

You know, that, that doesn't, it doesn't do what it says it does it just turns it dies has anyone like successfully used like anyone been like i should have put it yeah i didn't put in the crisper that's what happened never never yeah no the crisper is just the crisper is just where you put things when you have to put a turkey in there. Right. Just like, oh, okay, well, I'll just put it in the drawer where all the trash goes. Yeah.

Or like the meat that just oozes blood. I'm like, yeah, put it in that drawer. It's the blood drawer. Crisper. I don't know. I use the crisper for meat and never with the intention of making it crisp at all. Like, that's not the name that is associated with what I'm doing at all. It's just separate.

That's your problem that's why your meat's not crispy yeah well that's what they that's what they call the the gene editing thing right the crisper cr oh yes pr which makes me dubious of gene editing i'm like well it doesn't work in the fridge how's it gonna to give my baby a runner's legs? An extra crispy. Yeah, you made my baby extra crispy. I want an original recipe, baby. It's extra crispy.

It's just the baby is Colonel Sanders. You're like, oh, no. He comes out of the womb. I do declare. Okay. Is this real? I mean, it would be nice to have a ranked baby. That's all I'd say.

You know, they have a rank. That's pretty good. Starting out on top. Right, but it's one of those old, like, weird, problematic, like, post-war, you know, honorary colonelships. True. But, yeah, baby comes replete with problematic takes on the antebellum sow. My favorite thing about Colonel Sanders

is when he started getting old, basically they just paid him to go away after KFC was acquired. They were like, all's a here's a bunch of money please stay away and he would just he wasn't employed by the company technically anymore he was their ambassador he would just go to random kfcs and he was all you know he had dementia and stuff and he would just go to random kfcs and start like yelling at people about like things that were wrong and they're just like and they had to call the company, and they're like,

Colonel Sanders is here. Again. Can you get him out? And the company would have to send somebody like, all right, Colonel, right this way. Oh, no. He accused this family of tourists of being Tojo spies. I'm sorry. we just can't

have this here. It makes everyone uncomfortable. And I think he's making up new racial slurs while he's here. It's really odd. He forgot all the old ones, so he's just going off the dome right now. And they are bad.

Okay, Mocha man. Like, whoa, mocha man. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to take that as offensive. Next number here is more than 150. And that's the number of types of general electric appliances that now offer a Sabbath mode. I should say right away, this is more of an Orthodox Jewish thing. It's only like some specific sects of Judaism need this. GE introduced it in the year 2000.

This is coming from an article on the 99% Invisible site by Kurt Kolstad. He says, quote, He says, quote, activating Sabbath mode on a GE refrigerator disables interior lights, disables display panels, disables alarms, disables beeps and the ice and the water dispensers. In that mode, opening the refrigerator door triggers no changes, including normal cooling processes to compensate for the temperature loss, end quote. And it's specific to not wanting to use electrical devices on the Sabbath, if that's what you believe. Right.

Yeah. You know, that was Elvis's first job. He was a local, you know, Christian guy. So he was the local goyim. Sabbath helter. Yeah, Sabbath helter. Yeah, and they would have him go around and, you know, push all the buttons and do the stuff for him on Saturday.

There was like a prominent Jewish family in Memphis. And it's why Elvis, until he died, wore a cross and a Star of David around his neck. That's amazing. Because he just had a great experience with them. Ed was like, I'm going to do it. He loved that family. Yeah, they treated him like he was their son. But yeah, he was literally like their button pusher, like helper on the Sabbath.

Yeah. He's like, that boy thinks we like him. Oh, no. We're like him. Oh no. We're using him for his fingies. Yeah, I guess, I mean, I don't know.

I guess invite him for dinner. I mean, if he's got no, I mean, that's sad. I mean, I don't, I don't dislike the guy,

but I don't, let's not give him the wrong idea here either. He's not part of the family. Yeah. It's like Elvis, can you just go make a movie or something man like we are trying to hang out with ourselves like yeah like just us but i learned baruch out of tyronoi a shared kid of sean. You're like, whoa, okay. Elvis. We get it.

Relax, buddy. You know, we like it. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace,

because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, guys, we have three big takeaways about the fridge. Let's get into it. The first one here is takeaway number one. Your refrigerator is actually a heat remover. Wow. And this might be something people know. Like, I did not know this before researching it.

But the refrigerator technically does not, like, add cold to anything. Your refrigerator is a box that removes heat from the box and then yeah it's you know become cold that way it's similar to an air conditioning unit yeah that's how air conditioning works it turns out to wait okay explain like i'm 36 yeah i i basically said that to my computer earlier. And the thing here is there are a few types of refrigerator technology. Most of them in the modern world use what's called a vapor compression system. And so the super basic version is there are three steps. And the steps all use something called a coolant.

And the coolant is any chemical that's easy to change between a liquid state and a gas state. Because when you change it between liquid and gas, energy is transferred. And so the first step is you let this liquid expand into a gas, and that requires a lot of energy. So as it expands into a gas, it's taking energy from out of the box. It's making it colder. And then if you've ever seen like those coils on the back of a fridge, that's where this coolant is.

And so the second step is you send the gas coolant away from your food. And the third step is you turn it back into a liquid, which like shoots the heat essentially out of the back of the fridge and away from your food. I don't know if that tracks. I know that's like a lot of chemistry. No, but the process is from the coolant expanding is the mechanism in which the heat is being removed. Because, yeah, I'm thinking of it as like air conditioning. I'm like, cold air, come out of vent, make cold. Yes.

Same with a refrigerator. But, yeah, I'm like, there's no vent in there. Aha. But, yeah, okay. I'm putting my mind around this. Okay. Cool. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought of both fridges and AC the same way until researching this. I was like, yeah, the AC shoots cold out of it and the refrigerator shoots cold into itself, but it's just taking heat out instead of putting cold in. That's the deal. I live in an apartment in East Hollywood with no AC. So I've had to become very acquainted with how air conditioners work, especially because every summer gets hotter and hotter. So I've had to become very acquainted with how air conditioners work, especially, you know, cause every summer it gets hotter and hotter. So I finally had to break down and buy one,

like one of those little rollaway ones that kind of looks like R2D2. And yeah. And apparently what you want is a double vented one. So the air can come in one vent and go out another, that'll cool it down faster. But most, the most commercially available ones are just one vent and I out another that'll cool it down faster but most the most commercially available ones are just one vent and i'm already bored well and that and that kind of thing is why so many ac

units are either in a window with the back pointing out or like in a wall with the back pointing out because then that shoots the the energy out of your house to make it cooler so your fridge kind of works the same way that's why it's hot back there huh yeah it's not because the devil's telling secrets back there like my grandma used to say all right alex i'll play your game my my grandmother said uh if you eat on the toilet you're feeding the devil uh wow i like that everyone's grandmother has some weird stuff they told them i love it secrets My grandmother said, if you eat on the toilet, you're feeding the devil. Wow. I like that everyone's grandmother has some weird stuff they told them. I love it. Telling secrets?

That's why it's hot? All right. Can I have a sandwich now? I'm four. And I'm hungry. You know, if it's raining and the sun is shining, the devil's hitting his wife. Yeah, that is one I've heard. Man, I've heard that one, too.

The devil is in so many explanations. He's really, he's everywhere his wife. Yeah, that is one I've heard. Man, I've heard that one too. The devil is in so many explanations. He's really, he's everywhere. Yeah. Or she. Oh, buddy, I refound, because I'm at my folks' house at the moment, I refound my favorite book from when I was a kid, and it's called Ghosts and Goosebumps,

Ghost Stories and Superstitions from Alabama. And the second, like, half of it is just a list of superstitions that are hilarious. They're like, don't pour salt on a bird. It can't fly. You're like, why are y'all doing this? Why would you do this to a bird? You know why.

Okay. It's like, hey, what are your New new year's resolutions i'm trying to break my habit of pouring salt on birds i do it so often it's kind of a reflex but i gotta i gotta get out of that they can't fly it's just so funny you ever seen it oh my gosh well and the this this refrigerator system here so yeah the well that third, it compresses the gas back into a liquid, releases energy. The energy goes out of the back of your fridge. The coolant cycles back into the cabinet

to do the first step again where it expands. And then if you hear that humming noise from your refrigerator, that's usually an electric pump because the electric pump is then compressing and expanding and moving this coolant. So that's usually the reason your refrigerator is making that noise that's going on this coolant so that's uh usually the reason your refrigerator is making that noise that that's going on that's what it's coming from oh well

my grandma would say about that you better catch it yeah oh boy you we were all like who's gonna get to it first it was it was me and it was unsatisfying i'm sorry we split off into two roads i did a call back to my grandma, and we did a dad joke. And also, what other, like, fridge design thing? And I swear it's interesting. The thing where those coolant coils are on the back of the fridge is relatively new. And I sent you guys a picture of what's called a monitor top refrigerator. That was what ge put

out in the 1920s it was the first like hit home electric refrigerator and at that point all the tubes were on the top so we used to have fridges where there's the food and stuff and then there's this like weird cylinder coil on the top because that was how they used to do the uh the tubes of the coolant and stuff so i I've actually seen one of those. Oh, no way. Yeah. So when I was in high school, a buddy of mine, his dad at some point in the 60s was like,

I'm done with society. And he built a cabin in the woods about 12 miles north of my hometown. And then, of course, he rejoined society and had a family, but he just still had this cabin so we would just go out there and get drunk every weekend of high school and it was awesome because it was way out beyond any police jurisdiction and we would have bottle rocket wars and like it was just it was the best pretty good absolute best and there was cows so at a certain point everybody'd be real drunk and my friend connor who's from Ireland, would go, I'm going to hunt a cow.

And then we'd we'd follow Connor's, you know, drunk idiot, you know, this idiot out into the field where he would try to fight a cow. You know, good times. But the point is, in the cabin, they had one of those monitor top fridges. That's amazing. And and because we were stupid, we didn't you know, we didn't know that there were actual coils up there because we were like, oh, this thing's so old. It's before they had electricity. And so I remember my friend telling me that how it worked was you would open up the little monitor thing at the top. They would put an ice block into it, and it would somehow spin around the ice to cool down the fridge. And I fully believed that uh you sent this email is that true yeah that's that's not what happens i was like oh yeah sure you go to the old ice house

you you got the forceps you carry it down the road like in old times and then you put it in top and it sort of spins and it makes it uh rain snow into your fridge turns out no i found this out uh today when I read your email. I'm excited because that's like, it's a perfect transition into takeaway number two. The United States created the practice of home refrigeration by creating a weirdly sexual tradition of home ice boxes. And the sexual part is not why it's a perfect transition. But what you're describing is how ice boxes used to work. It wasn't this monitor top thing. But before electric refrigeration,

people, especially Americans, had an ice box, which instead of all this electrical arrangement and knowing chemistry and stuff, it was just a container and then a container on the top of it with a block of ice in it. And just the ice makes it cold. That was the entire system. It's not technological or anything. Well, and the process of getting the ice was like crazy because they would actually have to float it down rivers and stuff like that. And there were ice wars like it turned violent and stuff like that in a lot of cases because

it was a commodity. So yeah, it's all that stuff is really, really interesting. You got an ice guy? People did, yeah. There was a point where the United States was like running on ice boxes and kind of promoting them worldwide. And it's this annoying thing where you have to buy ice from a company. You usually needed it delivered daily.

If you had an icebox that also had a drip pan that the ice melted into, you usually had to dump that out every day. You also had to be fast about opening and closing the box because it doesn't re-refrigerate. You're wasting coal, truly. And then people called that a refrigerator before the electric kind was invented. And then people called that a refrigerator before the electric kind was invented. And then also there was a whole ice harvesting operation that is like hard to describe unless you've seen Disney's Frozen, where there's a whole song and dance number where they're harvesting ice.

Then you know what it looks like. But it's these guys with big metal calipers carving ice out of specific lakes and rivers that had the best ice in the US. Where's that good ice at? What was like the most, yeah, what was the most coveted ice at the time? Canada, St. Lawrence River, I think. That was where there was a big trade of it, at least, because they would float the giant blocks down, like St. Lawrence River,

like all the way down the Erie Canal to New York City and stuff like that. Yeah, that's right. So how do I, okay, well, ship me some St. Lawrence ice. I would love to do an ice taste test. You know? Just to be at that level where you truly, and I'm sure back then

if ice was serious business, you'd be like, drink something like, what was that? What is this? To hatch a pea ice? No, no, no, sir. Where is my glacial chill? Yeah, well also it was like truly a

global trade of it. We'll link an amazing 99% Invisible podcast about it. One of the first people to do it was named Frederick Tudor who started out harvesting ice at a pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts and he would use sawdust as insulation. And the trade got so big, they were sending it to the Caribbean and to British India.

Like this was boat times. They were boating ice from Massachusetts to India because that was how the ice economy worked. There was money in doing it. It's baffling. And now you just buy an electric refrigerator. You don't do that at all nah nah i do it the old way oh yeah i wait 14 weeks for a tray of ice like my grandfather did and his grandfather before him

what the i mean running into town from the la river like the boat is here the boat is here like it's yeah the ice boat we have 12 cubes mother think about how pissed you are now if your roommate uses all the ice trays oh yeah you know back then you're like we're in jamaica and i have to wait 15 weeks for this stuff to come from. Oh, you're getting killed. You're absolutely, you are going missing. If you, if you mishandle my, cause I, cause I like really cold drink.

I'm an ice drinker, you know, I love it so much. And I could not imagine again, because it's really, it can really be the difference between something being really good or really bad is having ice for it. Oh yeah.

And to, to be in a play in a world where ice is sparse i could not imagine the overreactions i would have because i get mad if someone eats a french fry off of my plate so imagine when ice is is like you gotta wait three more days yeah no yeah i wonder how much ice crime there was like crimes of ice passion oh well also there at this time in the past there was also something called ice famines and an ice famine was when there was an unusually warm winter the supply of ice decreased and then that impacted people's ability to refrigerate their food it was legitimately a famine more or less because you couldn't store as much food you couldn't keep enough food cold to eat it in a sanitary way and so people were very excited when electric refrigeration came

along was like okay we can move on like we don't need to do this anymore is there any i'm trying to think of anything technologically that could bring us that same kind of relief. Oh, like a good change. I mean, we've truly peaked in terms of creature comforts. Yeah. Unless like things are bathing you now. Like, I feel like that's the only other thing. We're like, oh, you don't have a bathe box? Yeah, I was about to say, darling, join me in the bath bag.

Yeah, exactly. I can't think of it. Maybe squatty, but bidet has been like the, you know, that's about as far as we can go. Oh, you know what it is. And for this reason, I have yet to buy one of these. Hey, I mean, I don't have any money also. That's part of it. But the Oculus Rift things where you can just watch netflix strapped to your head i'm like i don't leave the house if

i have that you know where they've got it you know they have it so you're looking in and it looks like you're inside a movie theater and you can literally just lay on your back and just stare into the into oblivion oh no you don't even have to do the small task of craning your head to look at the tv like you would normally to watch tv in bed you could just straight up watch look up at the ceiling so uh yeah i just know that's bad news babe what are you doing self-care yeah yeah your face down bring me my feeding tube. Oh no, it's happened. I want the taters and carrots. Right.

Blend them with ketchup. Mushy peas. I like mushy peas. With a boba straw this time. The other one's the diameter is too narrow too narrow it's just a very good tip that's very smart uh i want the big straw so the mango chunks don't get stuck as far as american things this like icebox thing is also was so specifically american we were kind of known for it at the time that historically and jonathan reese cites a british travel writer named winifred james

in 1914 james said quote whoever heard of an american without an icebox it is his country's emblem it asserts his nationality as conclusively as the stars and stripes afloat his roof tree besides being much more useful in keeping his butter cool, end quote. Like we were and are the famously refrigerate stuff country in the world. True. It's always fun to read stuff like that and like even go back to like Detokville

or something where you're just like, how did everyone else know us better than we do know us currently? Just seemingly any foreign person could just show up here and have us nailed down exactly in their writing. Here's the six problems I see with these people. And you're reading it. It's like 1802 and you're reading it today and you're like, yep, they got it. They nailed it.

Has anyone at the White house seen this list yeah has anyone seen this list has anyone tried any of these things they're still huh all right whatever in the 19 teens somebody was like yeah y'all are y'all are the fridge people yeah it's like we're still the fridge people yeah totally attack of the fridge people literally uh i'm here to take all your resources because we need power for refrigerators but that is like that's like one of those cultural things i've butted heads with with roommates because i'm like it is very much refrigerate everything immediately like in american kitchen culture in japan it's not like that you'll

have things on the stove that are like stewed or whatever that you don't like be like get into Tupperware now or it's gonna kill us and oh yeah I've done that and then like I'd be like oh man you're gonna get sick you're gonna get sick you're gonna get sick I'm like just so you know I'm doing this off the strength of I believe centuries of not refrigerating anything or certain things. And it's been funny. I had one argument with someone that was so intense. And I said, then don't eat.

Because I'll tell you something. I'm like, let's have a bet right now. I will eat this and I will live. And I will have nothing wrong with me. Because you're trying to apply whatever your upbringing is to something I've done my entire life and I have not ever been sick. I'm obviously not going to leave out a bunch of half-cooked shrimp cream sauce

or something and then be like, all good. But yeah, other things, they've been cooked so long, it's a much different process of bacteria building. And so I'm like, what's good here? But yeah, that is a little budding of the refrigerator people culture that I've had down.

Oh, if you put peanut butter in the fridge, I will hit you. If you put peanut butter in the fridge, I will hit you. If you put hot sauce in the fridge, I will hit you. Some hot sauces, they need it, though. Okay, if it calls for it on the bottle, but you open a guy's fridge and there's Tabasco in there, stop it. No, no, no. That's just vinegar. I believe in my Illinois childhood,

we did refrigerate the peanut butter, and you don't need to. It's not necessary. It turns out. Yeah. So it's too hard to spread. Yeah. Yeah.

It's too hard to spread. And also it's, you know, I don't look, I'm the, I'm the chunkiest one here, but I'm just saying you get a spoonful. It's kind of hard to get the spoon out if you're going for a little midnight snacky. Yeah, it's true. going for a little midnight snacky yeah it's true there's also that like one one last thing here about the icebox era because i mentioned there was a like weirdly sexual component and so we should get into it uh the thing in the icebox era was there were these ice men it was a job where you were like daily distributing ice to people and basically all of american culture decided that this was like a lethario sex guy uh and like let's make jokes about it they were like the hunky firefighters

of their day yes yeah yeah oh man what kind of outfits do they rock they they were sort of dressed like milkmen but also and there's a great Atlas Obscura article about it we'll link, but they say that Icemen combined several working class Lothario tropes because you have the daily home visit, like a milkman or a mailman. And then you have the like burly young dude, like a pool boy or a landscaper because they have to carry these big blocks of ice upstairs and stuff. And then you also have like you can call these guys up and order it like a pizza delivery guy like it's all of those things stacking up

into everyone being like oh the ice man's coming huh wink will wink haha it was it was a big joke at the turn of the century yeah right well there there are some uh ice companies today that still use that image there's i can't remember the name of the company, but there's one in LA. You go to CVS or I forgot where I've seen this, but it's literally a guy with one of those like Irish kind of newsy caps. And he's wearing suspenders and he's got his sleeves pushed up like Mitt Romney. And he's holding a giant thing of ice on his back. And I actually have this one uh this is from my hometown uh and you'll see these all over outside gas stations and stuff

uh it's uh i don't know if you can see that mr ice the coolest man in town it's a sexy without a doubt it's a sexy ice cube man it is we'll i'll text that to you alex he's chiseled we'll we'll link it his head is an ice cube and then the rest of him is ripped just incredibly ripped ice beef ripped ice my favorite gatorade flavor i was so pissed when they discontinued that in the fierce melon. Yeah. Shame on them. But yeah, these ice guy, this Alice obscure article.

I mean, the women are horny for the ice man in these photos. I mean like as horny as you could look in the twenties, which is sort of like, I'm smiling so hard. My teeth might break, but these guys are okay. I see.

And the jokes are like, you know, he looks a lot off. Your son awfully looks a lot off your son awfully looks a lot like the ice man doesn't he yes yeah it was a whole at all and we we won't listen to it on the show because it's more fun to just know about it but in 1899 year before the turn of the century uh apparently the the top song in the hold on let's check the math on that oh yeah 18 okay all right sorry go on you know they say 1-9-0-0 party over it's out of time party like it's 1899 continue

and so in this case this is a hit song recorded out an Edison wax cylinder, which is just fun to me. But it was a song called How Do You Like to Be the Iceman? And Atlas Obscura says, quote, had there been a Billboard Hot 100 for Edison wax cylinders, this song would have topped it. And the lyrics are about just the jealousy of the Iceman having a big house, having a business, but mainly getting alcohol and kisses from all of the women in town as he goes around delivering ice. And one of the lyrics is, quote, from every girl a kiss is his prize. If he gets no kiss, they get no ice. End quote. Which is just like sexual extortion for ice.

It's just gross. He cucked every dude in that neighborhood. That was the trope. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow. All right, Iceman. God, that's what I'm saying.

Ice crimes of passion again. You know what I mean? How many ice crimes of passion were there? Like these are so many Dateline episodes in the making. Oh, and think about how many murders went unsolved because they were stabbed with a dagger made of ice yes exactly the murder weapon turned into a puddle and no one was the wiser you know boom you vanish in my ice truck nobody knows it ain't stinking and there's no there's no decomposing back there i'll tell you that much and get you far, far away before you start reeking. Yeah.

That's what I tell all my clients, all my customers. Anyways, how much ice do you want, honey? Oh, man. Well, we got one more takeaway for the main episode here. Let's get into it. Takeaway number three. takeaway for the main episode here. Let's get into it. Takeaway number three. A refrigerator-shaped athlete reinvented sports betting by accident.

And this, I also, I don't think I told you guys, this will release the day after the Super Bowl, Super Bowl 55. So we have not seen it, but a lot of people have. And we're looking back to super bowl 20 here because the athlete is named william the refrigerator perry his nickname is the refrigerator yeah super bowl shuffle yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely well what substitute teacher didn't make me watch a cassette tape with that moment on it a video dhs tape uh watching the watching NFL's greatest moments and you're like, this is a AP history class. What is this?

Oh, it's historical. It's historical. Because it's just so massive. And you're like, yeah, I get it. We love stuff like that in America. Like, look, he's bigger than he knows what to do with himself. Woo! Yeah, Super Bowl XX, that knows what to do with himself. Yeah. Super Bowl 20.

That's the that was the year I was born. That happened a few months before I was born, actually. So but yeah, I always, you know, I grew up I grew up with the Super Bowl shuffle and all that stuff. Yeah. And I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. And I remember like the Michael Jordan era of basketball was happening and the adults around me seemed like still equally excited or more excited about this one Bears team from years ago they were they were like that was the thing they had a song and dance and they won that was great like that was the the dominant thing in Chicago culture is the the 1985 Chicago Bears football team and your first born son has to get a refrigerator Perry tattoo on his back. Yours looks great by the way, Alex.

I'm glad I can tape shirtless. So you guys have been very cool about it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you kind of said, don't bother coming on the zoom call if you don't want me to be shirtless. And I was like, okay, whatever you want, man. We, we respect your Midwestern culture. You're shirtless and eating cheese and sausages, and that's cool, man. We have your people, the Chicago suburbs people.

Well, and there's a few sources here. The main one is SB Nation. I think a lot of people have heard of this athlete. I didn't know about the sports betting elements until working on this, but William the Refrigerator Perry was a defensive lineman. He was six foot two, 335 pounds, which is 1.88 meters and 152 kilograms for a metric friends. But 335 pounds was nicknamed the Refrigerator. According to his teammate, Sean Gale, quote, his nickname came from the university that he attended clemson there was a photograph taken of williams sitting next to a refrigerator he was so big that he blocked it out of the picture

end quote and so apparently he was nicknamed after being the like perfect size and shape to blot a refrigerator out of a picture, uh, if necessary. That, that is such a like South Carolina thing of just like, dude, Hey, this is big. We're going to call it bridge.

You get it. Hey Bill, get next to that fridge, man. Oh, look at it. It's huge. go Clemson the only comparable athlete I can think of is Shaq where like he's a very successful athlete and part of the appeal was he was just bigger than others in a way that people found like exciting

he also he was drafted by the Bears in the first round in 1985. And coach Mike Ditka was apparently the one who like made the decision. But defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan labeled Perry fatso and then publicly called Perry a waste of a draft pick entirely because he thought like, no, this guy's too big. Like this would not be functional on a football field. This doesn't make sense. Ryan was wrong. Perry had a very good season as soon as they played him yeah I I love that there was an era of football where it was like no he's too large that's ridiculous like did like you read his stats and I was like today that's not I mean that's like it's still big but it's not unheard right right right you're like six two come on buddy you got to be

at least seven three nowadays yeah really you want to freak me out come on buddy come with that six two nonsense just real quick the chicago bears went 15 and one that season they went to super bowl 20 and along the way during the season perry is a defensive lineman, but they started using him occasionally on offense. And quote, during the season, Perry had generated Kardashian-esque amounts of hype as an oversized and very part-time running back. And the idea was they would use this enormous man as a running back if they needed just a yard or two, because he was so big, like by the time they tackled him, he would have gone some distance. And so they did that a few times in the season. He scored two touchdowns on five rushes. I mean, watching him play fullback is really something else

because you're just like, yeah, go ahead. Just do that. There's a lot of satisfaction because it's just the most caveman-looking thing when you're like, this big mass is going to just run through these other little ones very easily just just by sheer force it's a physics equation in motion right there like no you can't you're not gonna stop that yeah sorry but yeah with Shaq though I will say just you know just as a Laker fan I Shaq was also a fantastic basketball player but

he was just massive and that was his advantage but he's also a fantastic basketball player but he was just massive and that was his advantage but he's also a great basketball player but to the point of just being so you know in love with just oversized things remember his like sneaker would just be a thing at a mall and you're like there's a shack shoe here yes i mean like that's all this i stood in line to see the Shaq shoe Right, it's like That's where we are as a culture, we're like It's a big shoe It's huge We just worship oversized

Nonsense, so it's just like, yeah That's so, I haven't thought about that Since the mid-90s, I swear to god I stood in line at Shoe Depot to see the Shaq shoe Yeah, for what? It's a big shoe It's huge big shoe. It's a huge shoe.

Oh, wow. I was like eight years old. That's a big shoe. Nike Town in downtown Chicago. It was like an exhibit. It was like, let's behold the mighty shoe. Yeah. I was like a little eight-year-old kid just being like, dang, I could fit my head in that

shoe. Yeah. It's like that scene in Anaconda where they roll out that big snake skin on the boat and ice cubes like there's snakes out here this big that's the same thing with that shack shoe you're like there's humans out here this big like i've never seen a shoe like this well hold on now yeah although when i when i saw the shack shoe it did vomit up uh john voight and he winked at me the captain anaconda go watch it on netflix the uh the sports betting part of fridge because i didn't know this part there's a thing that now exists and i think people know about called a prop bet and the the prop bet is when

you don't just bet on who wins or loses the game. You're betting on specific things happening in it. The best ones. And they partly developed because it's kind of risky to run gambling around just the whole result. It leads to things like the 1919 Black Sox, where the White Sox threw the World Series for money, or Pete Rose's gambling on games he managed. You get problems when the outcome is tied to betting. It can be an issue. It leads to Adam Sandler being shot in the head in the jewelry store. Yes, yes.

We've all seen that fable, of course. And so both to avoid that and then also to make more money, in the 1970s, SB Nation has this amazing history of a few guys at a few Las Vegas sports books starting to offer prop bets. Some involve sports and then some were just weird. They did a prop bet on where the decommissioned Skylab space station would crash when it crashed back to Earth. And it paid 30 to 1 for Australia. If you pick the winning thing, it crashed back to earth and it paid 30 to 1 for australia if you if you pick the winning thing it crashed in australia but this was like considered weird and considered odd and then this peak happened in the 80s where the casinos started having super bowl parties

and this fun nationally popular bears team goes to the Super Bowl and they have this weird play they do once in a while where a big guy is a running back. And so the first massive prop bet was on whether Perry would score a touchdown offensively in the Super Bowl. The odds rocketed to 75 to 1 and then it started getting national coverage and then it went back down to 2 to 1. It was a very volatile market. But Perry scores in the Super Bowl. The casinos pay out big on that. And then they have an entire business for the rest of time of prop bets on the Super Bowl and everything else.

Wow. He started it. William GameStop Perry. Boy. Right. Destroyed all these hedge funds. Unbelievable. He destroyed the defensive line and then he destroyed up the

edge the whole thing yeah because prop bets now it really just opened the door to like the dumbest things to bet on you know like even the even the political debates they'll take prop bets you know what i mean so yeah he really i mean it really goes to show you it did expand people's thinking like wait a second hey man what kind of action would you give me if uh i uh divorced my wife right yeah wait what well i don't know let's see i've seen you guys so i wouldn't pay out that big all right but you take action sure sure yeah it it just turned people into just degenerates. Yeah, like it's anything now. How much you bet that lady will fall off the stool by the end of the night?

Please, sir. Ma'am, you're that lady. I told you to keep them coming. Oh, boy. And yeah, the prop betting like for the super bowl alone apparently by the 90s and not long after this super bowl 20 uh the casinos were offering between 30 and 50 prop bets just on the super bowl and prop bets can now be as much as 40 to 50 percent of all the betting on the super bowl because you can do any part of the game like you can do how

long the star Spangled Banner singing goes and what color the Gatorade bath will be and which commercials will happen when. They've broken down every potential second of this game into gambling. It's just- Oh, yeah. I remember a couple of years ago when Justin Timberlake was the halftime show, and the big bet was, will Janet Jackson show up and get redeemed after 2004 or whatever? And of course she didn't. Just Justin's a cad, okay? Yeah, he did it.

I hate him. Yeah. Get out of here. I won like 20 bucks because I knew Lady Gaga's national anthem was going to go over. I think that was the Super Bowl before that one, where I took big action on that. I was like, what's the over-under on that one?

I'm like, yeah, she'll do over two minutes. Yeah, yeah. But it was wild because it really came down to the wire. It was really all about the home stretch with her because that's really where you're going to get your mileage out of that bet. We were getting dangerously close to her not covering it until she's until we got to banner yeah wave and then it was like 45 minutes from there and i was just like yes lady gaga keep going indulge yourself indulge yourself and i just got over and it was the most satisfying

thing those actually tend to be the most satisfying bets because they really require no expertise yeah or some just some level of awareness you know yeah you're like please do the mariah carey finger thing at the end the whoa yeah exactly i had 20 on carry finger. Yes. Honey, we can get that new refrigerator now. Yeah. Full circle. There you go. Folks, that is the main episode for this week.

My thanks to Miles Gray and Rivers Langley for chilling with me. Waka, waka, waka, waka, waka. Anyway, I said that's the main episode for this week because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Albert Einstein's refrigerator, because that is a thing. So visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than two dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation.

And thank you for exploring refrigerators with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, your refrigerator is actually a heat remover. Takeaway number two, America has dominated world refrigeration ever since the strange and sexy era of the icebox. And takeaway number three, a refrigerator-shaped athlete reinvented sports gambling. shaped athlete reinvented sports gambling. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great.

Miles Gray is an amazing podcaster. Please hear him every weekday on the Daily Zeitgeist. He co-hosts that with the great Jack O'Brien, who you may know from the potatoes episode of this podcast, but many other things too. Miles also co-hosts the podcast 420 Day Fiance with Sophia Alexandra. That is the TV show 90 Day Fiance combined with the number 420. And if you don't know that number's significance, you have to ask your parents. And then please hear Rivers Langley co-hosting the podcast Goods from the Woods. Also, it's variant The Corona Diaries.

Rivers is low-key one of my favorite Southern podcasters because I'm transplanted to North Carolina, but Rivers is from Alabama. He knows North Carolina references like Kakalaki. He's obviously not the only Southern podcaster. We had Billy Wayne Davis on this show very recently. He's from Tennessee. But please add Rivers to your rotation if you seek a little Southern flavor in your podcast. And then, of course, links to all of those podcasts by Miles Gray and Rivers Langley are in the episode links at SIFpod.fun. Many research sources this week.

Here are some key ones. A great article in The Atlantic. It's called The Huge Chill. Why are American refrigerators so big? That is by historian Jonathan Rees. An amazing article in Atlas Obscura. It's called When Everyone Wanted to Be the Iceman. That is by Kelly Robinson. That will link you to the 1899 hit song on Wax Cylinder about sexy Icemen. You can hear that. And a couple articles about William the Refrigerator Perry. One of my favorites is from SB Nation.

It's called When the Final Score Doesn't Matter, How Prop Bets Changed the Way We Gamble on the Super Bowl. That's by David McIntyre. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons.

I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.