Official Trailer

Imagine a world without the power to capture or transmit sound. Steven Johnson journeys to the Arcy sur Cure caves in northern France, where he finds the first traces of the desire to record sound. He also learns about the role radio played in the civil rights movement and reveals the Hollywood star who designed a WW2 weapon that would make possible the modern cell phone network.

Steven Johnson explains how entrepreneur Frederic Tudor made ice delivery one of the biggest export business in the U.S. and where Clarence Birdseye, the father of the frozen food industry, experienced his eureka moment. He also travels to Dubai to see how cold has led to penguins in the desert. From IVF to food, Hollywood to human migration, the unsung heroes of cold have led the way.

Best-selling author Steven Johnson tells the story of the people who took us out of the dark and into the light, including the invention of Edison’s light bulb and how an 18th-century shipping community discovered a source of illumination by putting a kid inside a whale’s head.