Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Ice

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier investigates America’s obsession with ice. From excessive ice in drinks to the joy of frozen food, Farrier finds that ice is deeply American. Meeting with Reid Mitenbuler, the author of Bourbon Empire, David discovers the story of Frederic “the Ice King” Tudor, who dug up ice from the lakes of New England and got America, and the world, hooked on ice in the 1800s. Farrier then heads to New York to meet writer and academic Heidi Julavits, who muses about the significance of ice in American culture and tells David about her icy memories from Maine… and 2023’s Coachella. Farrier discovers how the Holiday Inn made ice machines mandatory in American hotels before he considers the fact Americans want to cryogenically freeze themselves to live forever. There is no denying it: Americans love ice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Flightless Bird is sponsored by BetterHelp. Now, if you're anything like me, you've had moments in life where you have absolutely no idea what to do, what path to take, or even how to take the path in the first place. I had a lot of this when I first found myself marooned in America, readjusting to a million different confusing things all at once. The fact is, sometimes in life we're faced with tough choices and the path forward isn't clear. What decisions to make, how to make them, it all becomes really fuzzy. And whether you're dealing with decisions around your career, relationships or anything else really, therapy helps you stay connected to what you want while you navigate life so you can move forward with confidence and excitement. Trusting yourself to make decisions that align with your values is

like anything. The more you practice, the easier it gets. Therapy helps you do things like set boundaries, which for me as a people-pleasing New Zealander has been very, very important. And I'm still learning. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists anytime for no extra charge. Let therapy be your map with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash bird today to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash bird. I'm David Farrier, and New Zealand are accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. This is essentially a show where I learn about American culture. Sometimes I learn a lot, and sometimes I emerge more confused than ever. Many of the topics I cover are big and obvious. I'm thinking of attending a game of baseball or football, or looking at America's love of flying the American flag in as many places as possible. So much of the American mythology is about ideas and the constitution, and there is no one American, and we all are only here together in this place, and the flag could represent that

well, because it is more of an idea than a country. But some things are slightly more subtle than a giant flag flapping in your face. Aspects of American culture that are everywhere but somehow hard to see. Which brings us to today with an Americanism of encountered countless times in a variety of places. I honestly can't remember where it happened first. There it was at the diner, of course. It arrived, fast and unannounced. Next, there was a movie theater. There it was again at a 7-Eleven, and glaring at me from my local grocery store.

It was offered to me at a friend's house, at a party, at a nightclub. I found so much of it in the hotel room corridor, and there it was again in my room. Each time, I would almost look right through it, but it was still all I could see. It made my head hurt, causing me actual physical pain. No, I started to say, I don't want that, I never requested that, leave me alone, keep it. But it just kept on coming. Because America loves its water one way and one way alone, frozen. So, order your favorite drink and prepare to have it filled to the brim with frozen cubes of H2O, because this is the Ice Episode. Okay, do you know what I'm talking about at all? How do you feel about this?

Okay, I feel as I felt many times when we've started these episodes, that we've jumped the shark, bit the bullet, you know, we're on death's door. Yeah, we've run out of ideas. Run out. Yeah, absolutely. But then it's normally those that end up being sort of my favorite episodes. So I'm pretty excited about this because, yes, I have zero faith that this is relevant at all. Yeah. However, I do know that you are correct.

That if you go to a restaurant, most often what they will serve you is water with ice. Yeah. And I noticed this because I don't like ice water. Okay. You and me, identical. Okay. It's us against the world. It's too cold.

Or America. It's us against America. So for me, there's two problems with it. The first one is I don't want my water to be that cold. Occasionally, yes. Mostly, no. The other thing is most of the volume of your drink is then just ice yes and if you're having you know if you're at a cinema and you order a coke half of it's ice all

of a sudden you're getting ripped off also when you drink it your lips get cold the ice sometimes hits on your lips it can be sore i don't brain freeze brain freeze of course but if there's ice i ask for a straw and i guess we're not really supposed to have straws that much anymore. No, but that's the thing. No, I mean, I'm glad you raised that because I don't really raise it in this episode. But the straw, I think, exists to get through the ice. It does. It's almost like you're plunging over that icy layer down to the actual thing you want to drink.

To the fluid. So you can suck it up. And we all know that straws are one of the worst things in the world for the planet. They're not great for the environment. They're awful. Well, they have those noodle ones now. They're like made out of noodle. I hate them.

I hate them. That sounds incredible. Is this an L.A. thing? I don't know. Or does it give you sort of a noodle and you're sort of sucking out through a bit of macaroni? Essentially. That's so funny. But in New Zealand, do they not do this

no generally not to this extent so if you go to a cafe and you order some water chances are and look i i've been away for a few years now so my work is like eggs i'm like tiptoeing because maybe now they do it more than they did okay but if they serve ice at all, it's definitely less of it. Because in America, you get ice, it's a fuck ton of ice. It's not a cube. It's 25 cubes. It's so much. In New Zealand, it's either no ice or one cube. It's much less ice. Okay. I have one exception to this. As I don't like ice water, I do like ice with soda. Okay. So no one likes a lukewarm soda. What scenario?

In a restaurant or the movies? The problem is I don't really drink soda very much, so this doesn't come up often. But if randomly I'm at In-N-Out, every now and then I'll get a Coke. And yes, it has ice in it. I don't say with ice it obviously comes with ice yeah but if it didn't that would be gross yeah that would be a problem so i wouldn't you don't want it you don't want a lukewarm soda yes i guess it's more volume as well that i've got the issue with like one little cube or two is one thing but a whole like a hot if you're half your cup is ice, half or more, then that's the problem.

But you haven't probably had the pleasure of going to an American baseball game with the baseball ice. What is baseball ice? Baseball ice is tiny ice. It's not crushed. Yeah. It's the shape.

Little cubes? It's like little cubes, but they're more in the shape of a cylinder. Are they rectangular? Like a cylinder, but tiny. It's like, you know those squishy earplugs? I know, I know. I had some in recently. But not the ones that are like putty.

They're like a squish and it's a cylinder sort of. And that's how big this ice is. No, it's actually a little smaller than that. I like this. But it's so good. So baseball field ice is a known American luxury. Okay, because I've been to a game, but I don't remember that ice. Okay.

It's really good. It's the only. So, okay. So you obviously didn't delve into that in this. No, because the other thing is, do you ever like suck on a cube? Like if you're bored? I have. And then sometimes I swallow it and it's scary.

Oh, yeah. Imagine choking on a bit of ice. But that's what's really scary because you just have to wait for it to melt. But by then you're dead. You're dead. Yeah. Yeah, completely. No, dangerous.

Completely. I always got scared when the kids would want ice. And I was like, I just pissed off. I never even thought about the choke aspect of it all. Yeah. Well, okay. I'm going to hit play on this documentary. Ice in America, it's so much bigger than you imagine.

It's so much bigger. Big ice? It's big ice. Oh, fuck. It's so much bigger than a waiter saying, do you want some ice in your drink? It's so much bigger than that. Okay. The story of America's obsession with ice would take me from one side of the U.S. to the other.

And it's a journey that almost didn't happen. I raised the topic of ice with Monica and Rob during the Alligators episode, saying I wanted to investigate why every hotel room in America insists on having an ice bucket in every room. Ice buckets in American hotels? No. What? No, what? Answered Monica, putting a dampener on the whole thing. But as I carried on my American life, I kept noticing America's obsession with ice. My local diner makes sure any cold drink I order is at least half ice. At the movies, it's nearly all ice. At friends houses, every fridge comes with a built in ice dispenser. I've started recording them on my phone.

I walk into the CVS to buy some toilet paper and there it is, a giant wall freezer filled to the brim with bags of ice. I open the door and fondle it. In every 7-Eleven, a slushie machine, ice twirling and swirling in a never-ending motion. Hypnotized, I get a cup and pull down on the handle. America is ice-obsessed. And while I made this episode, I'd be constantly reminded of this fact. Walking into a sunny house in Los Feliz, California, I was offered two things, a seat and a glass of water filled with ice. Do you think Americans clock the amount of ice they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis or do they think it's just normal? Because it's not.

No, I don't think they clock it at all. It's so normal here, no one even thinks of it, where if you come to the United States, it's like, whoa, what's up with all the ice? What is up with the ice? I've come to visit Reid Mittenbuehler, a journalist and writer who shares my curiosity about America's ice obsession. I've lived in Europe for a little bit, and you're like, wow, there's not that much ice. But then I slowly adjust and you get used to it, and then you forget about it. I imagine Monica has simply forgotten about it, experiencing a kind of ice amnesia.

She came here when she was just a kid, and she's just gotten used to America's icy ways. But for me, it's still a shock. Reid came to understand America's relationship with ice when he wrote his first book, Bourbon Empire. As he traced the history of American whiskey back to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, Reid started thinking about a key ingredient often paired with bourbon, ice. And it turns out that America was the first country in the world to fully embrace ice as a commodity. Back then, and this is the early 19th century, people would go out to big lakes and they

would carve out these big, you know, maybe 300 pound blocks of ice. And it was very high quality. It's very dense, very clear because it freezes more slowly. And you would ship it to people's ice houses, especially rich people. And you could insulate it and it would stay year round. So whenever you needed ice, you could go and you could get it. If you've seen the opening scene of Disney's Frozen, yeah, that's how they'd harvest ice back in the 1800s. fair as a frozen harbour nighting. As Reid points out, various civilizations had been harvesting ice forever, but no one did it as ambitiously as the Americans. It was a man from Boston who

had the original icy vision, a man called Frederick Tudor, nickname, the Ice King. Back in 1806, Frederick the Ice King Tudor's aggressive ice harvesting in New England made him one of America's first millionaires. They used the tale of Frederick the Ice King Tudor, Frederick Tudor, at the Harvard Business School. He created a formula. He created a roadmap for a way to make money, to create a business, to create a market that's been used a lot since. The self-proclaimed Ice King made his millions by getting people hooked on ice. Like a drug dealer pushing heroin, Frederick pushed ice. He did this by making Americans realize they not only wanted ice, they needed it. There was a market for supermarkets, hospitals

for keeping medicine cool, but that's pretty niche. And he's like, well, I need to expand the market. So he starts going to inns and places selling food, and it's, well, what about your drinks? Suddenly you go from this niche thing of a couple hospitals and some stores to just like, every time you drink anything, which is throughout the day for pretty much everyone, why don't you cool it down? So create a big market. And he sells it kind of the way a drug dealer works, where, you know, you give the first hit away for free. Like, here you go, just try it. And then once you get them hooked, it's like, okay, now here's the bill.

So he'd offer free ice at bars in places like Savannah, Charleston, and New Orleans, and then started charging. And then he thought bigger. His ice was a big hit in the Caribbean. And so it's not until about the 1830s that he really starts to make a lot of money. The Caribbean, England, he just kept expanding. The Zoruma Queen Victoria would only use Massachusetts ice to make her drinks at Buckingham Palace. The Ice King's icy fingers enveloped the entire planet. And he looks at Calcutta in India as this market.

And by that point, he had a couple of things. He had a foreman named Nathaniel Wyeth who figured out a way to harvest ice from the lakes where they'd use these horse-drawn carriages. It brought the costs down by about two thirds. So it's a lot cheaper to get the ice out of the lakes. And then he's packing it in these ships. The way that Wyeth's machines worked, the ice was very consistent.

So there wasn't a lot of air in between the blocks, which would help it evaporate or melt. And they'd pack that with sawdust, insulate it. so they could make this voyage of 14,000 miles to India where you've got to cross the equator which is very hot twice and they get to Calcutta and it was the same thing as where you've got all these people who you know had gotten along fine for centuries without ice so well what do we do with this it's like well drinks and then cocktails and all that comes into the equation. And once they were hooked and liked this luxury, the market was established and made a fortune.

As better techniques for storage and transportation were created, America's obsession with cold drinks back home just kept growing and growing. American newspapers would report on America's ice trade like it reported on other things like the weather and war. Panicky headlines warning of ice famines when summers got too hot. There was artificially made ice but it wasn't great, expensive to make and slushy. But in 1844, almost 40 years after the Ice King had started extracting his ice and shipping it to the world, Floridian doctor John Gorry invented the world's first artificial ice making machine.

He'd been trying to cure yellow fever. Sure that coldness was the trick. Gorry didn't end up curing yellow fever, but he did make ice. By the time the 1920s rolled around, American inventor Clarence Birdseye figured out how to freeze food even faster. Inventing the double-belt freezer, he birthed the frozen food industry. Walk into any American supermarket, and you're reminded of Clarence Birdseye's invention. Aisles and aisles of frozen food as far as the eye can see. food as far as the eye can see. So the frozen food and the way ice relates to frozen food really ties into, I think, America's pre-industrial past. So you've got this era where the country is

very agrarian and you've got local markets for food and everything's highly seasonal. And as soon as ice comes into the picture,'re able to ship food further you're able to preserve it for longer so it's changing america's diet and it allowed the cities to explode in the u.s you know you've got now it's like you can move into the city and you can preserve food you can get stuff from markets that are further and further away and so it really changed i think the landscape of america so you see this transformation and it is right, I think, the landscape of America. So you see this transformation, and it is right around the middle of the 19th century, mid-1800s, when cities are really starting to explode, and you start to see that transition from an agrarian to an industrial

society. So ice played a huge part of that. So it really did transform the country. The New York Times called it a scientific miracle, Americans falling in love with their frozen food as much as their icy beverages. By 1930, an American had invented the rubber ice cube tray. And by the 50s, frozen TV dinners were part and parcel of the American lifestyle. Pull up a chair, America. Sit right down there, America. Swanson's cooking just for you Swanson puts dinner together the way you like it To be American was to freeze everything in sight

Liquid, solid, it didn't matter Ice wasn't simply pleasure anymore It was patriotism Told you it was big, Monica Ice made the country just like beavers. Don't act like the first thing we're not going to talk about is that you said I came to this country. I was born here.

Do you even know? Have you been paying any attention? Are you serious? Are you serious? I thought you came across here as a little bub-bub. Her mom. And a little manger. Your mom was born here, too.

No. God damn it. I thought you were born. In India? Yeah. And then your mom went, we're going to America, wrapped you up like baby Jesus in a little swab, put you in a little basket, brought you on a plane or a ship or something, and came over here. No.

I'm American. little basket bought you on a plane or a ship or something and came over here no i'm american we just did a whole episode on fourth of july you never told me you know i thought you came here as a baby hold on and then oh we're getting so we're getting really deep okay i never told you as in so your assumption is yeah that i'm not from here because I'm not white. No, I just thought that- Was your assumption that Rob isn't from here? No, because he's always wearing those American baseball caps. I thought you came as a little kid. No.

Because I knew you're an immigrant. I thought you had just come over here as a baby. Genuinely. I'm personally not an immigrant my parents are immigrants your mom was young though she was young my mom came when she was six okay all right but i was born in georgia wow hold on i gotta take this because there's someone calling yeah albertsons I felt the need to take that because I can,

I feel totally fine disrespecting this show right now. I didn't know, but I don't think it's a bad thing. I didn't know. I just, I made an assumption that was incorrect. That something had led me. I was sure you came here as like a kid for some reason, a little bub bub.

I just don't know how you couldn't know based on the many many interactions we've had like you know i'm from georgia i know from georgia but just in my brain yeah i had you coming here as like maybe a one-year-old maximum two okay and that's what i expected i just thought yeah for some reason that's what I expected. I just thought, yeah, for some reason, that's what I thought. Wow. I mean, this does make me feel like so much of what you say on here is- Is colored in a whole different way. Is a lie. Well, no, I always just thought we'd both kind of come here. You'd come here as like a one-year-old. I'd come here as like a 38-year-old. And I always thought we had that sort of that one thing in

common. And now I find we're even further apart Remember yesterday I guess you were on muscle relaxers I was on a lot of drugs because of my back issue Did you tell me? Just a few days ago we talked about on Independence Day How grateful I am for my dad And my grandparents for coming over here.

When you were a little one year old. No, Monica, I really, I feel bad and I take it on board and I, I learned, I've learned something new about you. Wow.

I just, I'm shocked. I wonder how many other people think this. Yeah. I don't think anyone does. Just me. It's pretty known. I do have some like,

I think it's known. I mean, sometimes you do have a fact wrong and you just never question it. And I'm really glad to now have it corrected. It just feels like one of those things that like the veil was pulled. Like all of a sudden you don't know me at all. Like you don't know my face. You don't know my history.

You know, all of it. Wow. Wow. Okay. It's just going to be hard for me to get back into ice. I've got a Google Doc of Monica facts, and I'm just going to open it up and just add born in the USA. I feel like over the past month or so,

I've earned a note in your phone for the airplane when it crashes. Like you've done enough damage that I think I've earned one at this point. I have done psychic and emotional damage to you, and I feel – I'm just going to – I'm worried now what other things I've got wrong. I'm worried, too. Like, I've just got this whole other view of you. What does it do now that you know that I'm fully – Full-blooded.

American? It makes me feel like the premise of the show is even stronger. Okay. So I'm trying to learn to be American. You're even, I mean, you're always very American to me, but you're even, you're a little bit more because you're like birthed. Yeah, I'm actually American. You were birthed on soil here.

Okay. So you kind of thought the whole premise of the show was flimsy, was two immigrants talking to each other. Flimsy at best, yeah. Wow. All right, well, I guess that's good. I think it's good I identified with you. Identified with you, and I think that was a beautiful thing.

You projected your story onto me. All right, so ice. I feel like let's move through. Let's move on. We can move through this. Yes, we can. We've broken the ice. So just recapping, ice harvesting happened en masse in America.

A lot of really important ice inventions happened, like the rubber ice cube tray. We pop the ice cubes out. Huge. We all love those, don't we? We do. Although before there were rubber ice cube trays, there were plastic ones. Yeah, they were also invented in America. Yes.

Okay. And then the rubber ones came out. I just think the rubber ones really took it to another level. They definitely do. I love them. I have a rubber ice cube tray that's in the shape of roses. It's a sphere. That's really beautiful. And you close it. So you put the water in through a hole at the top so that it like fills up the sphere. And then you put it in your old fashions. What occasion do you use that for for old fashions yeah that's so it's really really pretty and i used to devour frozen foods oh okay so that's the other thing that i want to talk about because for me one of the american supermarkets what do you call them grocery stores yeah they're a marvel to me. And the frozen food section- Like from the Marvel universe?

Just so huge. Okay. They're a marvel. I'm just blown away by their size. And the frozen food section, I can't believe it. It's so big. There's so much variety. It literally helped build cities. Once people could freeze food well, then they could change their lifestyle. And now we're all living in these big old cities with our frozen food. So in New Zealand, how big is the section? It's tiny. And what's in it? It's little. It's one end of the supermarket usually. There'll be an aisle for bread and eggs, which are not refrigerated. And next to that, you have all the frozen stuff. And it's

small. It'll be one half of a wall. and then there'll be some cabinets with some frozen stuff and ice cream peas, that kind of thing. The thing about America and then America does so well is just the meals. And for me, as someone who lives alone, the frozen meals is a very tempting road to go down. Oh, that was a brand of choice? Yes. I have a core formative memory because I used to go to my grandparents' house after school. My grandparents are from India. So you can write that in your notes. Writing grandparents from India. They're not American, although they are citizens. Anyway, when I would stay there, there used to be a Stouffer's.

So a Stouffer's mac and cheese is a thing. People know about it. It's so good. Yeah. But they used to have a Stouffer's mac and cheese with broccoli. Oh, frozen brock. All mixed in. It was all one dish.

And that was my shit. That was my favorite. It sounds like I love mac cheese. It was so good. Okay. But they stopped making the broccoli kind. And that was a huge blow to my life. What a wild card to throw some brock into the mac cheese. I'd never think to do that.

And so for lasagna, that is huge. That's a go-to. You have to try it. Any other frozen foods that I should... I still haven't had a Hot Pocket. Are they frozen or no? Oh my God god you must yes that is like a little to calzone kind of okay it's kind of like your meat pie a little bit but

frozen okay and then in the shape of a burrito burrito slash cylinder slash slash earplug. Uh-huh. The imagery. Baseball eyes. I'm really getting a lot of imagery in my mind with this. It's like a pizza burrito. Okay. I'll try hot pot. Any other frozen foods that I should, I mean, I haven't really tried many here.

I'm afraid they're not that healthy. Marie Callender's. Okay. I mean, if you go to Trader Joe's, they have a ton of frozen. Oh, they have. It's better quality. I've tried some of them. You can have a whole delicious butter chicken in there suddenly yes there it is delicious can you approximate how many frozen meals you've had in your life i would say i went through a big phase

in new zealand of having a lot of mini frozen pizzas when i was a teenager at school frozen pizzas would be a big thing. Frozen meat pies sometimes. Okay. But just America, I'm just blown away by the amount of frozen foods and how it's all on tap. And it's just a remarkable invention. And we don't think about it enough. I used to eat a Stouffer's.

It was a lasagna, but it was deconstructed lasagna. Oh, la, la. And I ate it every day after school before cheerleading practice. Oh, so it sort of fueled the cheerleading. It was like fuel. Or maybe it was after cheerleading, before dinner. I would have it every day. Yeah, right.

I loved it. Well, America. That's America for you. Loves its stuff frozen. Do you want to learn more about ice? Yeah. Because the journey continues and it just gets icier. I'm heading to New York.

I order a Diet Coke on the plane and half the can is quickly transferred into a glass and topped up to the brim with ice. On my way to a Manhattan apartment for my next interview, I get a Starbucks coffee. Iced, of course. Walking past Columbia University and into the apartment lobby, I feel like I'm in a movie. The doorman greets me and lets me upstairs. So my name is Heidi Julewicz and I live in New York and I'm a writer. I'd come to meet Heidi because back in 2016, she had written an article I'd loved. An article called American Exceptionalism on Ice. I read something you wrote about, what publication was that in? It was a fancy one.

Oh, it was in the New Yorker. What was your pitch to the New Yorker when you're like, I want to write about ice? Do you remember how you pitched it or do they come to you? the New Yorker when you're like, I want to write about ice? Do you remember how you pitched it, or did they come to you? They actually wanted me to write something that was patriotic, or I think it was around the 4th of July. It was like a 4th of July issue. I was asked to come up with something that struck me as very American, and that was my idea. Heidi's written for every magazine I admire. The New York Times, The New Republic, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Slate. The list goes on and on. But I'm not here to fawn over her writing.

I'm here to talk about ice. It's great, though, because obviously you are American. And I think a lot of people miss the ice thing that live here. They don't understand how I'm fed up with all this ice in this country. I feel overwhelmed by it. And a lot of people don't clock that. In what situations are you feeling overwhelmed by ice? I'm just curious. On airlines, when I order a Diet Coke, it's all ice. Any restaurant I'm in, I'm drinking and ice is just hitting my lips and my mouth because there's so much of it. Well, now you're realizing the real reason for ice, which is to actually save money because it's cheaper to put ice in your drink than it is to

fill it with booze or Coke or anything like that. But it's funny you should say that because, yeah, I don't actually like ice, to be honest with you. I certainly don't like it on airplanes. And I always have to say at least once and usually more than once, you have to say, please, I would like a water with no ice. And then they instantly start putting, and you're like, no, please, no ice. It's usually at least twice. There was a rumor that went around online earlier this year that Starbucks was going to start charging more if you ordered your coffee with less ice.

A dollar surcharge, basically. It was nothing more than a rumor, but Americans were outraged, and the coffee chain had to put out a press release denying it. Americans get worked up about all things ice. During COVID, there was a dry ice shortage. Chaos. American hotels get complaints if customers don't have an ice bucket in the room. And the Holiday Inn staked its entire reputation on its ice fending machines.

The man who founded the Holiday Inn in 1952, I believe, the first one was in Memphis, and he decided to brand the hotel a little bit. And I think he was getting irritated that people were charging for extras. And he was like, at this hotel, we will not charge you for ice. And then it became like a franchise kind of ragging point. Kemmons Wilson was his name. And I challenge you to find an American hotel or motel today that doesn't have an ice vending machine humming away in some corner. Heidi tells me that as a kid growing up in Maine, she'd come face to face with America's ice obsession without even realizing it.

When she started researching ice decades later, it all snapped into place. There's this place on the coast where you can sail there. It's very warm and perfectly round, and it's called the Punchbowl. And there's this sort of mysterious set of train tracks that go from the water up into the woods and disappear. The tracks connect over this hill to the pond behind the punch bowl. And that is where the main lake ice company was. And there was a huge natural factory there. And the world was just producing ice all winter long.

And people would come and cut it out and then put it on a tiny train, put it up and over the hill to the schooners that were hanging out in the punch bowl, which I have to believe is named because it was filled with ice as if there were going to be a huge party there. I like to think it was named after that. It better have been. So then pieces of this land were put on a schooner and then taken really far away. The ice from that pond went to India. It's what the Ice King had started in New England

hundreds of years ago. His icy impact still there today. In Maine, where in addition to if you ever go by any general store, it's not just the gas pumps, but there are gigantic ice freezers on the outside. One fridge is bags of cubes and the other one is a big block in a bag. What would you use a big block for? Oh, you know, if you were maybe trying to chill a body, I don't know, like you killed someone. As well as keeping a dead body cool,

you can also chip away at the big blocks for a higher quality ice, less bubbles. But here we sit in Manhattan, hundreds of miles away from Maine, but still talking ice. Ice is everywhere here, too. All New York stores are very small, and there's a considerable amount of very valuable freezer space given up. I'm surprised that they have ice, but they do. Sometimes Heidi feels that ice is following her wherever she goes, and of course it is, because we're in America. Well, this was a non-icey memory.

So I went to Coachella in April. It's very hip. Is it hip, Coachella? I mean, I just think you should definitely go. It's so fun. It's in the desert. The average temperature is like 95 or something in April. It's very hot.

And so I was there the first weekend, which was the weekend that Frank Ocean did play. Okay. But what was so astonishing about his sort of failure to perform in the way that I think people were expecting him to perform, he had erected an ice rink in this 95 degree heat. Okay, maybe this makes me very American, but I was like, yes. Let's conquer the environment. Let's force it to do things that are absolutely unnatural. But in this case, America did not conquer. The ice rink wasn't freezing properly, shocker. And so then he decided to bail on the ice rink. I love musing with Heidi about

ice. I feel like I've met my match. While I simply think about ice, she fantasizes about it. Well, I just was reminded of something right before you came, which maybe just speaks to how deeply ice is fused to the American spirit. I had this idea that I wanted to make ice cubes on days that were very special. So if there was like a good thing that happened, I would make an ice cube and then I would label it. And then I would put it in my freezer. And then the idea was that when I was on my deathbed, people would put these ice cubes on my body and they would melt.

And I'd feel the day as I was dying. But then I probably drank those ice cubes. I probably used them in a drink. They're gone now. Heading back to LA, I decided I needed to talk to Reed one last time. I've been thinking about Heidi sacrificing her deathbed ice cubes, sacrificing them for the pleasure of an icy beverage. And I should say that I do like to have a cocktail and I do like ice in my cocktail. As you may recall, Reed had written a whole book about bourbon, a book about cocktails and ice and how the two are forever entwined. So the cocktail story is really interesting from the American perspective too, because Americans like to claim that they invented

the cocktail. And it's one of those things where it's like, well, no, there were lots of cultures that were mixing different liquids together and serving it. But the modern, what we think of when we think of cocktails, which is usually a cold concoction, Americans have a claim to that as much as anyone else, probably more so. You had cocktails in England, but they tended to be warm. You know, it's a much more cold, damp climate. And so you'd have this thing like a hot toddy or whatever to ward off the chills. But in America, they really started putting it on ice. It's a much warmer place. And it also speaks to this sense of luxury and decadence and, you know, a lot of energy consumption, you know, using ice in the middle of the summer to serve yourself something refreshing.

And so Americans started putting their cocktails on ice and then this idea that most people worldwide, when they think of cocktails, that is an American thing and it was all around ice. I find myself wondering what the greatest American cocktail is. Just a drink. A martini. Shaken, not stirred. Reid says there are a lot of answers to that question. And many do go for the martini. As for him, well, he goes for a julep. A drink I'd never, ever heard of.

I think the julep, in a lot of ways, the mint julep, has a special place in that history, In a lot of ways, the mint julep has a special place in that history, partly because it speaks, in a lot of ways, to the contradictory nature of the United States. And just to explain what a julep is, you have a massive amount of ice, usually shaved ice. It's very decadent. And you have a gobsmacking amount of bourbon, several ounces of bourbon, mixed with water and mint so it's pretty simple served usually in a silver cup and you've got this straw and you take a while to drink it but it's this really luxurious cocktail and when you think of it you have this idea of unhurried leisure especially

in the south and when we talk about that contradictory aspect of america you also have a cocktail that is very much a simple pleasure. It's very simple things. It's ice, it's sugar, it's bourbon, which is a pretty simple spirit, and mint. Stuff that's easy to find everywhere. So it's simple, but it takes a tremendous amount of work to make because you've got to shave all that ice.

So it's simple, but it's not. It's really complicated in a lot of ways. It's complicated and time-consuming, so it's not. It's really complicated in a lot of ways. It's complicated and time consuming, so it's relatively rare, which explains why I've never noticed anyone ordering a julep in front of me. It's the first I've heard of this drink in my entire life. Yeah, it's popular, but really not. Like, no one really takes the time to make them, but everyone knows what they are, so... And they're delicious. Every time I have one, I think, I should have this more often.

The last place he had a julep? The Kentucky Derby, the big horse race. And the julep at the Kentucky Derby sort of takes us back to where the journey of America's ice obsession started. Back to the quality stuff, mined from somewhere special and sold to those that could afford it. There is a super high-end luxury market for ice. So Woodford Reserve, at the Kentucky Derby, they will offer these really expensive juleps. And they'll sell them for like $1,000. And a lot of those proceeds go to charity. But to make it special, they would kind of go above and beyond.

Then they would have this ice. They mined this ice from these underground places that were mining for gold. So it was like, oh, well, gold comes from this and we're getting our ice from this lake next. You know, it's just a way to make it seem more luxurious and decadent. So they'll ship that kind of ice around, you know, or it's like, oh, we got this ice from some special place in the world for your drink. Oh, we got this ice from some special place in the world for your drink. There's something very savvy about the marketing of ice here. From frozen drinks to frozen foods, America has so much ice in its blood it'll probably never thaw out. The Ice King made sure of it. Made sure the American experience is filled with ice from the day you're born till the day you die.

And after you die. Fox 10 News is back. A Scottsdale cryogenics company is letting Fox News cameras inside to see their plans for the future. Freezing patients after they die so that one day they may live again. Around 250 dead Americans

have been cryogenically frozen already, with thousands more on the waiting list. As Heidi from Manhattan puts it, the American need for ice speaks to our obsession with refrigeration as an antidote to death. It's why Americans put their eggs in the fridge, to kill bugs. A fridge that exists in part because an American man was trying to cure yellow fever with frozen water. I'd started this journey mystified there was so much ice in my drink. But I've come to learn that ice is deeply rooted in American culture. Ice is as American as apple pie.

Maybe more American. Especially if that apple pie is frozen. And this concludes my lecture on the importance of ice in the very blood of america i enjoyed that good very much i see it's an icy journey yeah did you guys ever have the popsicle did you guys have popsicles monica we're not savages okay so you did yeah i love popsicles okay yeah i loved we had things called paddle pops i I love paddle pops. And we had fruit juice. And we had calipos, which kids would tease other kids when they had them because it was like a,

looked like you were sucking on a big dick. It was like a big sort of shaft. Oh, got it. And a calipo. Flavor ice was the one I drank. Flavor ice. Right. And it's just a plastic sheath filled with water and then a syrup, like an orange syrup or a blue raspberry or whatever.

And then you freeze it and turn it into a popsicle. And kids just, you'd eat these all summer and they were so good. I said, here we go. Yeah. More ice. Ice everywhere. Everywhere. When I was in Oklahoma and I went into a service station, and I don't know if it's that part of America, because my local 7-Eleven in LA has one of those slushy machines, which I tried for the first time recently. This wasn't a 7-Eleven. It was their version of a 7-Eleven.

There was so much ice churning drinks, like slushies. Yes. It was insane. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. That's very common. Just ice everywhere. Another thing, in 84, Ronald Reagan declared June 17th National Ice Cream Day in America.

So ice cream's big. There's only one country in the world that consumes more ice cream than America. New Zealand. Really? Yeah, literally. new zealand that's the one yeah literally yeah i looked into the stats on ice cream consumption and america number two new zealand number one wow what's your favorite flavor ice cream i'm a big fan of anything with mint in it you like mint chocolate chip yeah another thing i wanted to touch on america also loves a good ice sculpture. Yes, we do.

Yeah. It designates fancy. If it's a very fancy place, it will have an ice sculpture. It will have an ice sculpture. Yeah, and I love that. I wanted to talk to, there's this Instagram account, which is just like the most beautiful ice sculptures. I wanted to include them, but it was getting too icy.

You can only talk about ice for so long. Also the mint julep. The mint julep is very Southern. That's a Southern thing. Yes. So I don't know that when he said most people, I mean, definitely everyone's heard of it, but I don't know that most people have had one unless you're from the South and you're at like the Derby.

Yeah, right, right, right, right. Have you had one? I don't think I've had one actually i mean maybe in college maybe but i associate it and this might just be my own baggage with like racism i associate it with like the upper class yes out on the plantation drinking their mint juleps he oh god i wish i had a better memory he mentioned something about that association. He did. And it was either correct or incorrect, but it's a thing.

Yeah. That exists in the world. It's that of that association. Tennessee Williams plays, like people will have mint juleps and stuff. His book, he rewrote this book, Bourbon Empire, and actually another book about an Arctic explorer, which is really amazing. But just the history of alcohol in America is this whole other thing. Oh thing we should do an episode on that yeah it's fascinating and it is tied so closely to ice and america i mean america i didn't know this america was apparently the one that made

icy cocktails like they were icy before america came along really which blew my fucking mind um what's your favorite cocktail i like anything that's sweet i'm a child i want a pina colada yeah well that's like ice cream yeah alcohol it's like delicious i mean my i argue it's a cocktail but it's not i just like chucking a bottle of bailey's in the freezer and so it kind of half freezes and then just pouring it yum i do like I do like Bailey's. Off to bed. It's the best thing ever. I also looked into brain freeze because I've got a lot of brain freeze in America because there is so much ice. I never knew why it happened. It's because extreme cold in the mouth or throat, it tries to get warm,

so the blood vessels expand really quickly to get extra blood in there, and it's that quick expanse that makes that extreme pain hit. And to decrease brain freeze, you just hold your tongue on the roof of your mouth. I've heard that, yeah. And that sort of sets approach up. But what would that do for the blood vessels? Oh, I don't know. I don't think it does.

I think it just distracts you. Oh, you shove your tongue into the roof of your mouth. You're not so worried about the pain. I also wanted to note, during a lot of my interview with reed there was a leaf blower going through a lot of it so you can hear that blowing in the background so leaf blower episode if you haven't listened go back listen another all these american things start glaring on top of each other you know you're thinking about fridges and then i'm thinking about eggs again it's all just fuckingception, like when that city folds in on itself.

It is. It's when you start seeing the whole picture. The whole picture. We've had a bit of a falling out in this episode in regards to me not knowing about heritage. A heritage and origin and American-ness. But we have built a bridge of friendship back again with our hatred or our avoidance of ice. And I think that's to be celebrated. I like to concentrate on the positive.

Oh, sure you do. Always. And that's always what we should do. We should ignore the sort of the other stuff and just press on with the positive. Under the rug. Final quick question before we go. Would you cryogenically freeze yourself to potentially, if they solve a few different issues, be able to resurrect you in 300 years? No.

Okay. I'm pretty happy with the life I'm living. I don't think I need to come back. I don't want to. I feel like if they did solve it, they'd probably fuck it up. So when you are brought back to life, you'd be some even worse version. Like your eyes on your knee? Yeah, something would be horrible. Your brain would be a bit muddled or something

it'd be like a more fucked up version so i'm not doing it we're both also no on that yeah okay great we agree on two out of 45 things have i become more american in this epi yes you have. In my mind, you have become more American. Exactly. You've become more American, but less trustworthy. Less trustworthy. No, but you're doing great. We appreciate you going out on this journey. It was a big journey.

Teaching us about ice. Ice. Have some ice.