Something You Should Know - Surprising Factors That Influence What You Buy & The Strange Story of Ice

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Why do mosquitoes seem to love some people and completely ignore others? It isn't your imagination. Researchers have identified several factors that make certain people especially attractive to mosquitoes—and some of them are things you have little control over. https://theweek.com/articles/462191/5-things-that-make-irresistible-mosquitoes Most of us believe we make rational decisions when we shop. But behavioral scientists have discovered that many purchasing decisions are influenced by factors we barely notice. The way a product is described, where it is placed, how many alternatives are offered, what price is shown first, and even seemingly irrelevant details can dramatically affect what we buy. Richard Shotton has spent years studying the hidden psychological forces that shape consumer behavior. In this conversation, he explains why our choices are often less objective than we think, how marketers use these insights to influence us, and what you can do to become a smarter consumer. Richard is a behavioral scientist and author of The Illusion of Choice: 16½ Psychological Biases That Influence What We Buy (https://amzn.to/3q2Vne9). Ice seems so ordinary that it's easy to forget what a miracle it once was. Today, ice is available instantly at the push of a button. But not that long ago, obtaining ice was a massive undertaking involving dangerous harvests, international shipping routes, fortunes made and lost, and an industry that helped reshape the modern world. In fact, long before electric refrigeration existed, people were cutting huge blocks of ice from frozen lakes and transporting them thousands of miles. How did this unlikely commodity transform the way we eat, drink, preserve food, and live? Amy Brady, executive director of Orion magazine and author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—A Cool History of a Hot Commodity (https://amzn.to/3MKX7Rc), reveals the remarkable story behind something most of us never think twice about. Finding a green potato chip in the bag can be a little unsettling. Is it safe to eat? And what about those unusually dark brown chips that occasionally show up? The answers have everything to do with how potatoes grow, how they're stored, and what happens before they ever become chips. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30746/whats-those-green-potato-chips-you-sometimes-find PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS POCKET HOSE: For a limited time, when you purchase a new Pocket Hose Ballistic, you'll get a FREE 360 degree rotating pocket pivot and a FREE thumb drive nozzle! Just text SYSK to 64000 AIR DOCTOR: Head to ⁠⁠https://AirDoctorPro.com⁠⁠ and use promo code SYSK to get $250 off select AirDoctor air purifiers, including the 3500, 4000, and 5500 models. Plus, you’ll receive a free 3year warranty!  RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Positos seem to like some people more than others. Then what determines what you buy? It's often not what you think. A lot of people have a belief that they weigh up their choices in a very deliberative, reflective manner, whereas an awful lot of research from psychology suggests that there are subtle influences on our choices that have a much bigger than expected impact.

Also, when you get that occasional green potato chip in the bag, should you still eat it? And the amazing story of ice and how man-made ice transformed the world. So what about the guy who invented it? He was met with cries of blasphemy. People saying, how dare you create ice? Man can't create ice, only God can create ice. And Corey actually died relatively young and penniless with his reputation in tatters.

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Something you should know. fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, hey, welcome to Something You should know. You know, there are a lot of reasons to like summertime, warmer weather. I'm sure you can name a bunch of them. But there is something about summer weather and warm weather that is just not so great, and that's mosquitoes.

And as I'm sure you've noticed, mosquitoes often seem to be attracted to some people more than others. Why? Well, here are five things that can make a person more appealing to a mosquito. First of all, consuming alcohol may make your blood tastier to mosquitoes, according to a French study in 2011. Exercise. According to another study, exercise triggers this trifecta of biological signals that makes your exterior especially delicious to mosquitoes. Your blood type seems to matter.

People with type O blood are much more susceptible to mosquito bites than any other blood group. Being male, lady mosquitoes, which are the only ones that bite, the male mosquitoes don't bite, it's just the female mosquitoes. They seem to prefer men. In fact, larger people in general attract more mosquitoes than smaller people. And pregnancy is an issue. mosquitoes are attracted to women who are pregnant. In one study, pregnant women attracted twice as many mosquitoes as those who were not pregnant. And that is something you should know.

When you buy things, when you make purchasing decisions, it often seems like you're making that choice of your own free will. What you buy is your choice. Well, maybe sometimes. But there are a lot of other factors coming at you, often under the radar, that influence what you buy. Marketers spend a lot of money and effort figuring out what these influences are and put them into practice to get you to buy their products or services, and you're probably unaware of many of them.

But you're about to be made aware of them by my guest Richard Schotton. He is a behavioral scientist who has a great book out called The Illusion of Choice, 16 and a half psychological biases that influence what we buy. Hi Richard, welcome to something you should know. Very good to see it. So explain and go in a little deeper to what I was just starting to say there about how there are these other factors that influence our buying decisions and what you call this illusion of choice.

The illusion part is that often our choices aren't made for the reasons that we expect. I think a lot of people have a belief that they weigh up their choices in a very deliberative, reflective manner, whereas an awful lot of research from behavioral science and psychology suggests that there are subtle influences on our choices that have a much bigger than expected impact. So let's jump right into an example that explains what you just said. And maybe a good one is the subtitle of your book. your title of your book is The Illusion of Choice, 16 and a half psychological biases that influence what we buy. And that 16 and a half is one of these principles. So let's start with that. Now, there is a lovely study by Schindler at Rutgers University that suggests a degree of

precision makes a communicator more credible and more believable. So in his study, he recruits group of people, shows them an ad for a deodorant, And sometimes this ad claims that the geodrant reduces perspiration by 50%. Other occasions, the ad says it reduces perspiration by 47 or 53%. And when later on, Shinler asks people, how accurate is that geodrant claim? How credible is it? There is a difference in people's responses. So people think that the precise claim is about 5% more credible, 10% more accurate.

So even though people see exactly the same content to a meaningful degree, by introducing this element of precision, it boosts credibility and believability. What Schindler argues is generally in life, people who know what they talk about, talk very precisely, people who don't know what they talk about, talk in generalities. And over time, people learn and conflate the two things. And that translates to choice. So make the connection to how that influences my choice. So the argument there would be if you saw the geodron offering 50%, you might ignore it. You might not choose that geodron.

That very subtle tweak by the advertiser, introducing 47 or 53%, introducing this almost illusory degree of precision. That's what influences you. Most people, if they were put on the spot, would say, oh, I chose the geodron because of the benefits that were listed. they wouldn't zone in on the fact that one of the levers of influence is that hidden point of precision. So I'd like you to talk about what you call the IKEA effect, and it has to do with this old

story in marketing lore about Betty Crocker cake mix. Oh, yeah. And how that, how that, because I'd heard this a long time ago, that when they tried to sell cake mix, just as complete cake mix, didn't do as well. but when they made consumers add eggs, it made us feel like we were really baking and that helped. So explain all that. Absolutely.

So the story you're referencing is an old anecdote that's been passed around in marketing, but it was never really certain whether it was true or not. And the original claim was that when Betty Crocker launched their instant cake mix, this is back in the 1950s when they had realized that there were an increasing number of mothers going out. to work so two parents out with jobs didn't have time to bake cakes from scratch so they realized there was a market for an instant cake mix they create a cake mix very very simple you buy the mix

tear open the package pour it into a tub whisk it up with water stick it in the oven hey presto 20 minutes you've got a cake now when they launched it like that there were limited sales it wasn't very popular. But then a psychologist who's working with Betty Crocker begins to wonder if they've just made the whole process too easy. Because a cake, it's not just about getting calories on board very quickly. It's about expressing your love for the family. And how much love are you really expressing if you've put no effort into at all? So what Betty Crocker did was add in an artificial extra step. Now they changed the cake mix. You buy the cake mix. You buy the cake mix, tear open the packet, pour it into the tub, whisk it up with some water, and now you add an

extra step in, which is they tell you to crack an egg into it. And it's only when they add that extra step that sales take off. It's only when there's this degree of effort involved that it boosts the sales. Now, two psychologists, Dan Ariely, Michael Norton, back in I think 2012, they begin to wonder whether that anecdote was just a story, said that. They tested that principle in more controlled circumstances. They recruit people and they ask them to bid money to take home an IKEA box and people will bid a very small sum. You mean an IKEA box from the store, Ikea, like a box of furniture?

Next group of people, they make the same offer, how much you prepare to pay for this Ikea box. But this time, the box hasn't been assembled. participants have to build the box themselves and in that second scenario people's willingness to pay goes up by the order of about 50% now that study was repeated again and again in slightly different scenarios but each time you see essentially the same finding which is the more effort people put into a product the more they value it so there is an interesting opportunity here for

marketers which is on some occasions getting your consumers to go to a bit of effort, making them put a bit of working will make them appreciate your product more. So that's another example of a driver of behavior that people might not be aware of. Let's talk about price, because price seemingly is an objective thing. You decide whether or not to buy something based on the price. The price is an objective number. It can't possibly be influenced by anything else. It is the price. The price is the price. And a lot of people say they're price shoppers. They're very sensitive to price.

So how is that influenced by marketers? So there are a couple of interesting parts there. The first is the same price can be made to appear very different with a few little tricks. The second bit, which I think speaks exactly to your point, is sometimes people labor under the assumption that high price equals high quality. So there's a lovely study from Babershiv at Stanford where he serves five different bottles of wine. And people sample these wines and then they rate how much they like them. And each of the wines has a very prominent price label on it. The twist in the experiment is even though there are five different bottles, there are only four different types of wine.

One of them has been repeated. So people are drinking, say, a Merlo, they're having a sip of Merlo. they think it comes from a $5 bottom and they will give it a mediocre rating. Then a few minutes later, they take a sip of the same Merlot but from a bottle that says it costs $45. Now, the average rating in that second setting is 70, 70% high. Shib's argument is people assume that high price items are higher quality because they often are. but they take it too far. So in this setting, when people are drinking exactly the same liquid,

they expect that second wine to taste better because it's more expensive, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So our expectations affect our actual experience. So if you're a business or a brand, you've got to be very careful about heavy discounting because what it will do over time is train your customer to things. your product isn't very high quality and that expectation will affect their actual experience. We're talking about all the factors that influence how consumers behave and my guest is Richard

Schotton. He is author of the book The Illusion of Choice. I am one of Motenui on July 10th. Maui you will board my boat and restore the heart of Tefi Ti. And here we go. The journey begins. See her light up the night The ocean chose you Let's go save the world I got your back chosen one

Disney's Moana Boots Nick His name is Hay Hey Hey His name is Yum Yum when he goes in my tum-tum In theaters July 10th So Richard you said Or I think you said There are ways to manipulate the price

Even though the price is the price But if that's the case How do you manipulate the price To influence a consumer I did a study last year with Michael Aaron Flickr. We recruited 282 people and we told half of them that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 12-pack cost $1899. And when we said to those people, how good value is this brand? Just over 13% said it was good or great.

The other half of the people, we showed them the same brand, same volume of beer, 12 cans or 12 bottles. same price, but we added on a couple of extra words. We said that's the same as $1.58 a bottle. And what we saw, when we asked people that question about value, we saw a more than doubling of people thinking it was good or great value. We're up to 28% now. The argument here, and this is an idea called unit reframing, is if you draw people's attention to that smaller absolute amount

involved in a subunit of the products, it will boost their perception of value. The argument is that people when they are presented a price don't draw every relevant bit of information. They put too much emphasis on the elements of the price that are salient, that the business draws attention to. So these tiny little tweaks in how you present the price can have a significant change on behaviour.

So if you run a business and you sell, say, broadband. Don't go out and say it's $30 a month. Say it's a dollar a day. A tiny change that you can boost the margins of profitability of your business. Framing is another one of these marketing concepts that you talk about. So explain what that is. Framing is a related idea. It's essentially the idea that people relate or responds to descriptions of events rather than the events themselves. So there's a classic study from, I think it's 1974 and a psychologist called Elizabeth Loftus. And she creates a video of two cars crashing together. And she plays people this video. And you could Google Loftus framing car video and you can see the actual

video online. She plays people this video. And then she says to some of them, some of the viewers, how fast were the cars going when they crashed together? Other people are asked, how fast were those cars going when they collided together? And even though people watch exactly the same video, you get markedly different responses. The people who heard the collided question guess the speeds about, I think it's saying like 25 or 27% lower than the people who heard the smashed phrasing the question. Her argument is we don't respond to the actual event, or that's not what we only respond to, the words that are used to describe an event act as a lens and that changes how we respond to the situation. So the argument

here is how you frame an event, the language you use to describe an event, will affect a degree people's response. So if you are selling meat and you term that meat 25% fat, You'll get a very different response. People will think it'll be greasier and fatier than if you call it 75% lean. Exactly the same statistic. How we respond to it relates to the frame that's used. So I think most people have heard of the halo effect and know what it is. But how does it apply to the illusion of choice?

What is that? Because it steers you to buy something because you think it's good? So the broad idea of the halo effect is if someone or something, so it could be a person or a product, rather than us evaluating that product and all its different attributes, if that product has one standout ability, or that person has one standout ability, it affects our judgment of that person on all the other attributes. So if you are phenomenally friendly, and that's the thing that we notice about you when we first meet you, the halo effect suggests that we'll also assume that you are kinder, that you are more ethical, that you're more intelligent. So it's the idea that a strong characteristic in one field bleeds into people's perceptions of ability in other fields, even if they're unrelated. that affects people's commercial decisions because what it means is if you as a brand need to project the idea that you are trustworthy or well-priced it might be quite hard to prove those

things in a short TV ad or a short internet video but what you can do is show that you are humorous or likable those are things that are much much easier to convey and if you convey those attributes in a very powerful way, the halo effect suggests you will subtly influence people's perception of you on all these other different metrics. You know, there's long been this idea in the world of market research that if you want to know what your customers want, just ask them. They'll tell you. But based on what you're saying about how consumers behave, what they decide to buy and why and all the influences, it doesn't seem like asking the consumer directly would give you much information.

I think you're completely right there. That is a long-standing idea and a very widely researched idea in behavioral science. There's a wonderful phrase from a University of Virginia Psychologist called Timothy Wilson. And he says, we are strangers to ourselves that people don't have full introspective insight into their own motivations. So if you send them a survey, or if you put them in a focus group, they'll give you lots of answers about why they buy your beer or your trainers. But the problem is most of them are just plausible post rationalisations. They don't actually reflect the genuine drives of behaviour. So if as a business you are relying on what I would

call claims data, be very careful. A lot of those statements will not be true reflections of what genuine influences people. And what you should do instead is what most psychologists do, which is set up these simple test and control experiments. Don't ask people, create a A versus B study which flushes out some of these drives of behavior. Lastly, one thing you write about that I found particularly surprising was the Prattfall effect. So explain the Pratfall effect. Okay, so this is both probably my favorite ever study. And it was conducted by Elliot Aronson, a professor at Harvard.

He gets a colleague to take part in a quiz, and he gives the colleague all the answers. So the guy gets 92% the question's right, looks like an absolute genius, wins the quiz by Miles. But then at the end of the quiz, he spills a cup of coffee down himself. Aronson has recorded all of this, and he takes the recording and he plays it to listeners. But he splits the listeners into two groups. One group hear the entire incident, great performance and spillage, the other group hear an edited version, so they only hear the amazing quiz performance. Aronson then questions everyone as to how appealing is the contestant, and he sees a significant difference. The group who heard the spillage and great performance rate the contestant about 40, 45 percent, more appealing than the group you just heard the amazing quiz performance.

Aronson calls this the pratfall effect, this idea that we prefer people or products who exhibit a flaw. Now that idea, that is an amazingly powerful tactic for a business or a brand. If you think about some of the greatest ever ads, Avis, we're number two so we try harder. Guinness, good things come to those who wait. VW. Ugly his only skin deep. Listerine, the taste of H twice a day. again and again that some of the best brands ever draw attention to a flaw. Now, why this is so successful is firstly most brands brag.

So if you tell people about a flaw, you're being distinctive and therefore you're memorable. We know that distinctiveness leads to memorability. Secondly, in any persuasion situation, commercial or face-to-face, most people are a little bit cynical about what they're told because they think the communicator has a vested interest. to spin the truth. The brilliant thing about admitting a flaw is you have plausibly demonstrated your honesty and therefore any other claim you make afterwards is that bit more believable. So you get around this trust cap problem. And then the third and final reason is in many cultures, certainly the case in

Britain and America, flaws often have a mirror strength. So if you're Guinness and you go out and say we're slow, well, people assume if you're slow, well, most times, most situations, things that take ages to make, well, they're normally high quality. People assume slowness is associated with high quality. Or if you're listening, you say you taste awful,

or people assume if it tastes bad, it must be pretty potent. So the best brands apply the practical effect very selectively. They spend an awful lot of time thinking what their core strength is, and then thinking, is there a merest weakness I can admit that might emphasize that strength? Well, I find this so fascinating that we can be influenced by so many different things, subtle and maybe not so subtle, because as we said in the beginning, it seems as if we're making our own choices, and to some degree we are. But seeing how these things influence us in many ways under the radar is surprising.

I've been talking to Richard Shotton. He is a behavioral scientist, and the name of his book is The Illusion of Choice, 16 and a half psychological biases that influence what we buy. And if you're interested in reading that book, there's a link to it at Amazon in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here, Richard. Oh, you're welcome, Greg. It's Chatmoy. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if, like, what if it doesn't hold up?

That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Most days, maybe not every day, but most days, you probably have some interaction with ice. In a drink, perhaps, in your freezer, maybe ice on your windshield on a cold winter morning. Maybe you put ice on a sore shoulder.

Ice has long been a part of our lives. but not as long as you might think. Still, it's hard to imagine life today without ice. And here to tell the story of ice and how humans have tamed it and used it is Amy Brady. She's the executive director of Orion Magazine, and she's author of a book called Ice, from mixed drinks to skating rinks,

a cool history of a hot commodity. Hi, Amy, welcome to something you should know. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. So normally, when you ask people, what topics are you interested in? Seldom does the topic of ice come up. So how is this, how did you get interested in it? Why is it a topic you wanted to look at? Yeah, you know, I've always been interested in ice from an environmental standpoint, but I didn't start thinking about ice on demand and how this country, America, became so obsessed with ice until about five years ago

when we were experiencing this brutal heat wave. And the heat wave was so bad, it knocked out the power to my parents' house. And I was visiting them at the time. So we piled into their car. We drove to a nearby gas station that was operating on a generator. And I filled a cup with ice to try to cool down. And the more and more I thought about it, the more I started to think, well, how did I even know ice was here at a gas station?

I didn't even think. I just knew. Now, I've traveled enough abroad to know that that is not the case. anywhere else in the world. Only in the United States could you go to a convenience store or a gas station and just know that ice is going to be available. And when did ice, as you look back, when did ice become like a thing rather than just, you know, something that's in many ways a nuisance? But when did people go, hey, wait, we can do something with this? It's funny. Our obsession with ice is only about 200 years old. It can be said to have begun in 1806 when

a wealthy Bostonian named Frederick Tudor landed on the idea to start carving large blocks of ice out of his Massachusetts Lake and sell them to people living in warm climates around the world for a profit. Most of the people in his social class thought he was a madman for even thinking of the idea because nobody had ever shipped long distances, shipped ice long distances before, but he figured out how to do it. And he started bringing ice to these warm places where through a lot of work on his part. He got them to accept the substance into their everyday lives, and they became crazy about it. All right. So how do you ship ice long distances when you don't have refrigeration freezers to keep it cold? Well, you know, Tudor made a lot of questionable business

decisions, but he was a pretty smart man. And what he noticed is that the ice that was kept in his ice house. Now, side note, an ice house is basically a large well that's dug about, you know, 10 to 15 feet in the ground where ice can be kept year round if it's packed properly. And what he'd noticed is that properly packed ice, even in the summer months, can withstand, you know, heats above ground, you know, into the 80s and 90s. And to pack it properly, you just have to make sure that there isn't a lot of room between the blocks so that air can't get through it because air does expediate melting. Ice blocks were usually packed in sawdust in straw, which also helped to ward off some of the heat. And the blocks were elevated so they weren't sitting in their own

melt water, which also sped up heating or sped up melting. So he basically recreated the conditions of an ice house in the cargo hold of a ship. And when he sailed as far as the career, he was able to he managed to make it with about two-thirds of his cargo still frozen. And so what did those people who didn't have ice before? What did they use it for? It probably wasn't for cocktails, so it must have been just to keep cool? Or what was it used for? Well, this is the funny thing.

It actually at first was used for cocktails. Because here's the thing that sparked the American obsession with ice. It was an outrageous marketing plan. And the reason why Tudor had to launch this marketing plan is because when he first brought ice to these warm climates to places where ice rarely, if ever, form naturally, people had no idea what to do with it. They hadn't even seen this stuff, so they didn't know how to, you know, make delicious treats with it or how to use it to reduce swelling from an injury or anything like that. So in order to get people to buy the ice that he wanted to sell, he went to the local bartenders and baristas. And he said, I'm going to give you some of this weird frozen wet substance for free if you

let me show you how to use it to make the most delicious things. And let me tell you, as a fan of the, an old fashioned, I can say you can't argue with a drink on the rocks. And neither could most of the people who tried a cold cocktail. for the very first time. People went wild for it. And as soon as the bartenders saw that, they went back to him to ask for more ice. And this time, Tudor sold it to them at an ever-steapening price. And so Tudor basically created, you know, some of the first, or helped to create some of the first fancy cocktails in the United States. So when did, or what was the next big moment in the

history of ice besides that guy that shipped it. So what happened next that made it help to cement this whole thing? Then the next big thing was the invention of mechanically made ice. And that also has a really strange origin story. The first person to develop an ice machine was a doctor named John Gori, who lived in Appalachicola, Florida, which was this tiny port town off the Gulf Coast. And the reason why he wanted to make ice was because he wanted to cure yellow fever. Now, yellow fever was a disease that ravaged the American South every single year.

And doctors back then didn't know that it was caused by mosquito bites. All Gorey knew is that yellow fever got worse in the hot months, and it started to wane in fall and winter. And so he thought, if I can make a patient's body mimic the cycle of the seasons, maybe I I can cure yellow fever. The only thing is that the only way he knew to cure, or to make people's bodies colder was with ice. And in 1820s, Florida, the ice trade was brand new. Ice was still hard to come by and it was very expensive.

It was referred to by white gold by some locals because of how pricey it was. And Gorey, despite being a doctor, didn't have a lot of money. So he knew if he wanted to get enough ice help his patients he had to learn to make it himself so kind of thinking about the laws of physics that he learned during his medical school days he finally after years of failure figured out how to make a compressor that can produce ice and

the it's kind of funny but also sad part of this story is that gory thought when he would announce his invention to the world the response would be you know, uproarous joy and gratitude. But instead, he was met with cries of blasphemy. People saying, how dare you create ice? Man can't create ice. Only God can create ice. And Corey actually died relatively young and penniless with his reputation in tatters. So the idea of drinks with ice in them, soda, cocktails, when was that? When did that? I mean, Because all of this seems to be a relatively short period of time. Yeah.

All of this really happened kind of in the last 200 years. So, I mean, there is evidence that people were mixing ice with, you know, alcoholic spirits, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Tudor likely did it himself in Massachusetts. But what really launched kind of the idea of the classic American cocktail happened in the, 1820s when Tudor brought ice to New Orleans. New Orleans was the first city that New, that Tudor set his eyes on to become an ice city. That was partly because of the climate. That was also partly because of where it was located, you know, with access to ports for shipping. But it was also because of the culture there. There was so much happening. It was this transformative

of moment that was going on in New Orleans at this time with people there from, you know, French, Creole and Spain and Africa. And, you know, this was in a time when musicians were getting more bold with their musical choices that would eventually give birth to jazz. And so when he arrived there, he went to the bartenders and said, you know, I'm going to show you how to make cold drinks with ice. And not only did the bartenders allow him to do that, but then they ran with the idea. Because this was already a cradle of innovation, they were ready immediately to start experimenting with different sizes and shapes of ice, to make all different types of flavors and textures. And by the 1860s, we are starting to see the first celebrity bartenders in America who are

you know, making drinks named after themselves because they're so popular. Are there any examples of industries that have been transformed or changed or or even born because of ice? So, for example, the fishing industry exists because of widespread uses of ice. Until ice was able to be shipped, you know, far long distances, fish was just eaten at the coast. because there's nothing worse than eating spoiled fish. And, but with ice, fish could be packed in ice and traveled or shipped long distances. So the fish industry is one example.

The brewery industry is another great example. The American beer like Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, Miller Light, these are all forms of logger, which is a type of beer that can only be brewed at cold temperatures. And ice allowed that brewing to take place. And then it allowed bottles of logger to be shipped as well. And so we can thank ice for the fact that we can now buy Budweiser

at almost any grocery store in the country. But perhaps one of the most interesting industries to happen because of ice is the convenience store. So going back to kind of the late 19th century, There was a mechanical ice company in Texas called the Southland Ice Company. And this was a very large company. It had ice stores across the state. And people would stop at these places, usually on the way to run other errands, kind of like

the way we stop for gas today, to pick up blocks of ice to put into their ice boxes. Well, one of the managers of one of these ice stores noticed that some of the ice stores, Some of his clients complained about how they had forgotten a household staple like milk or bread. And so he started to stock those things. And then people started going to the ice stores instead of the grocery store to pick up the staples. Then they started installing fuel pumps because if people are going to be stopping to pick up the ice and kitchen staples, they might as well fuel their car as well. This model of ice store became so popular that the Southland Ice Company expanded its hours and then eventually rebranded itself to be named after those hours.

And the 7-Eleven was born. Isn't that interesting? So 7-Eleven basically started as an ice store. That's right. It was an ice store. How expensive was ice? If you wanted to go buy some ice, was it, was it, was it, much more expensive back in the day when they were harvesting it in lakes and shipping it across the

country? It sure was. In the very early days, ice was very much a luxury. It was expensive to ship and it was expensive to store. After the rise of mechanically made ice, the cost of a block of ice started to come down to the point where most Americans could afford it. And then, of course, today you can go to the local convenience store and buy a bag of ice for two bucks. When people had ice boxes where the ice would be delivered and you'd put it in the box to keep things cold, how did that work that the ice just didn't melt in a couple of hours or over the course of a day and just disappear? Or is that what happened? Ice usually lasted about a week. So ice boxes were kind of small wooden boxes.

that were lined with tin and and the early ones weren't very great but like anything else with time your technological advances made them a bit better and so you know by time we're in the late 19th early 20th century they're pretty much airtight and the ice yeah would late would last for about a week the ice was usually stored in an upper compartment of an ice box and there was a hole in the bottom of that compartment so that the cold air would kind of snake its way through into the bottom compartment where people would store their perishables like milk and meats and fruits and vegetables and the like. What about the ice cube? Where

did that come from? Whose idea was that to create ice in these little cubes? Yeah. So the ice cube was a marketing ploy by a lot of companies to sell first ice boxes and then ice boxes. And then ice makers. And what's really, I thought was really interesting in my research is that a lot of early manufacturers of ice boxes sold not just the trays that people would freeze ice cubes in, but also recipe books with quote unquote recipes for how to make interesting ice. And all of these recipes would involve things like freezing, unusual things in the ice cubes or, you know, using coffee or juice instead of water. But they were a huge draw for owning an icebox, being able to have these tiny little cubes

that you could pop out of metal trays. They eventually became rubber and plastic to put in your drink and cool down on a hot day. And then somebody came up with like shaved ice. Shaved ice in some ways, you know, goes all the way back at least until the 19th century, the early 19th century when bartenders were experimenting with how to make interesting drinks. Because shaved ice has a lot of surface area. It dilutes quickly. And so it was really good in cold, boozy drinks. As you look at the evolution of ice and how we've used ice, what part of the story do you find particularly fascinating? To my mind, one of the most interesting aspects of the

history of ice is actually the phenomenon of the ice man. The ice man doesn't exist anymore because we don't get ice delivered to our houses. But in the late 19th, early 20th century, when the ice industry was at its peak, in order to get ice from the ice manufacturers or ice harvesters into people's homes, it required this strong, burly man who was willing to drive blocks of ice to a person's home. And these blocks were like, like 50 pounds each. You know, pick that block up with a pair of tongs, sometimes toss a second 50 pound block over his shoulder with a burlap sack and then hike up six flights of stairs to a person's apartment before putting that ice into someone's ice box. It's really an incredible, an incredible job,

and they were ubiquitous, and they were everywhere. And they also, they were the subject of song and story. I was amazed when I was doing research on the Iceman at how many songs from this time period had lyrics involving a woman stealing a kiss from the Ice Man. And how many Valentine's Day cards I found that had puns based on the Ice Man. And I was trying to think about this. Like why did America have this romantic fascination with the Ice Man of all things? And then the more I thought about it, the more I realized of all the delivery men of the day, right? So there was also, there was the milkman, there was the mailman. The Iceman was the only one to cross that forbidden threshold and enter into the home.

And he was often home alone with the wife when the husband was out at work. And so rumors started to fly. And what also was interesting is that this obsession or I would even say anxiety about the Iceman seemed to peak during the world wars when many, many men were overseas, you know, fighting for this country. And I can't help but think of that 1930s song that was popularized by Ray Charles, I think, in the 50s or 60s with lyrics to say something like, I'm moving to the outskirts of town and I'm going to buy my woman a frigidaire just to get rid of that ice box and the ice man altogether.

Well, when you think about it, ice is one of those things that we really, we take for granted, but boy, if we didn't have it, life sure would be different. So it's interesting to hear the story, the evolution of ice and how we've tamed it. I've been speaking with Amy Brady. She is executive director of Orion Magazine, and the name of her book is Ice,

from mixed drinks to skating rinks, a cool history of a hot commodity. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on, Amy. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate this. Have you ever been eating potato chips

and you reach into the bag and you pull out a green one or it has green edges around it? Is it okay to eat? Yeah, probably so. If you've heard that green potatoes have turned poisonous, that's true. But you'd have to eat about,

two pounds of whole green potatoes in order to feel the effects of that poison. The toxic solanine in green potatoes is mostly near the surface of the skin, and once peeled and processed, the fraction of that toxin that remains is not really enough to do us any harm. If the potato chip in question is really dark brown, that one you might want to skip. The sugar levels and the amino acids in that chip are off, and so will be the taste. and that is something you should know. I know that you know someone who would love listening to this podcast,

so please do us a favor and share this with a friend. I'm Mike Hurruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social? Let me introduce you to fans.

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