Flightless Bird: Ice
2023-08-08 00:47:36
Hi, I’m Dax Shepard, and I love talking to people. I am endlessly fascinated by the messiness of being human, and I find people who are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and shortcomings to be incredibly sexy. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to growth and betterment. What qualifies me for such an endeavor? More than a decade of sobriety, a degree in Anthropology and four years of improv training. I will attempt to discover human “truths” without any laboratory work, clinical trials or data collection. I will be, in the great tradition of 16th-century scientists, an Armchair Expert.
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.com slash bird. I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander, 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 I've 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. Flightless.
Flightless. Flightless bird touchdown in America.
I'm a flightless bird touchdown in America.
Okay, do you know what I'm talking about at all? How do you feel about this premise?
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. Yeah, absolutely. Skating on thin ice. 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. 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. 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. Yeah. Occasionally, yes, mostly no.
The other thing is most of the volume of your drink is then just ice. Yeah. 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. 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 LA thing? I don't know.
Or they just give you sort of a noodle and you're sort of sucking up 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've been away for a few years now. This is like eggs. It's like eggs.
I'm like tiptoeing, because maybe now they do it more than they did. 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 is a lot.
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 the 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.
It obviously comes with ice. If I didn't, that would be gross. Yeah, that would be a problem. You don't want a lukewarm.
soda. Yes. I guess it's more volume as well that I've got. the issue with. One little cube or two is one thing, but 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 shapes. It's like little cubes, but they're more in the shape of 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. Cause, 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.
Cause. the other thing is, do you ever like suck on a cube? Like if you're bored? Um, I have. And.
then sometimes I swallow it and it's scary. You could choke 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. Yeah.
Yeah. Completely. No dangerous. Completely. I always got scared when the kids would want ice.
And I was.
like, 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 than it's big ice. It's so much bigger than a way to saying, do you want some ice in your drink? It's 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 America? 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 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 opened the door and fondle it.
And every seven, 11, a slushy 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 Reed 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. Reed 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, Reed 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.
As Reed 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, nicknamed 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, you know, 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, you know, places selling food, and it's, well, what about your drinks? You know, suddenly you go from this niche thing of, you know, 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. And then, once you get them hooked, it's like, okay, now here's the bill. So he'd offer free.
ice at bars and 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. There's a rumor 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 to 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 had gotten along fine for centuries without ice. So 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.
So the frozen food and the way ice relates to frozen food really ties in, 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, you'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 and 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 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 pup-pup. 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. We just did a whole episode on 4th of July.
I thought you were a baby. You never told me. 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, no. I just thought that you-.
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, right?
She was young. My mom came when she was six.
Okay. All right.
But I was born in Georgia. Wow. Hold on. I got to take this because- It's really good to look. Is someone calling?
Yeah. Albertsons.
They've got a free store.
I felt the need to take that because 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. Something had led me. I was sure you came here as 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. I mean, you're very American. You know I'm from Georgia.
I know you're from Georgia, but just in my brain, I had you coming here as 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 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, 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 feel bad. And I take it on board. And I've learned something new about you.
Wow. I'm shocked. I wonder how many other people think this.
Yeah. I don't think anyone does. Just me. I think 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 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.
So I'm trying to learn to be American, and you're even, when you're always very American to me, but you're even, you're a little bit more, because
you're like birthed. 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.
Wow. All right. Well, I guess that's good.
I think it's good. I identified with you. I 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 popped 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 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 beautiful.
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.
Oh, okay.
They're a marvel. I'm just blown away by their size. Oh. And the frozen food section, I can't believe it.
Yeah.
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 that America does so well, is just the meals. Yes.
And for me, as someone who lives alone, the frozen meals is a very tempting road to go down.
Swanson's came up in the dock, but Stouffer's was my frozen food of choice. Yes. I have the 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 brocc.
All mixed in. It was all one dish. And that was my shit. That was my favorite.
It sounds about, I love mac cheese.
It was so good, but they stopped making the broccoli kind. And that was a huge blow to my life.
What a wild card to throw some brocc into the mac cheese. I'd never think to do that.
And Stouffer's 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?
Oh, my 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. And then in the shape of a... Burrito. Burrito slash cylinder slash earplug.
The imagery. Baseball ice.
I'm really getting a lot of imagery in my mind with this. It's like a pizza burrito. Okay. I'll try a Hot Pocket. 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.
I've tried some of them. You can have a whole delicious butter chicken in there. suddenly. Yes. Bam, bam, bam, boom, 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. 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, it's a remarkable invention.
And I just don't think we think about it. 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. Yeah. 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. Uh, do you want to learn more about ice? Yeah. 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 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.
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. 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.
Then they instantly start putting ice 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 vending 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 bragging 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 Punchbowl. And that is where the Maine 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 Punchbowl. 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 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 icy memory. So I went to Coachella in April. 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, I think, 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, 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. So 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 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. No one really takes the time to make them, but everyone knows what they are. 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, they 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, where it's like, 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 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.
Icy. It's an icy journey.
Yeah. Did you guys ever have the popsicle? Did you guys have popsicles?
Monica, we're not savages.
Oh, okay. So you did.
Yeah. I love popsicles.
Okay.
Yeah. I loved, we had things called paddle pops. I love paddle pops and we had fruit juice and we had calipos, which kids would tease other kids when they had them. Cause. it was like a, look like you are sucking on a big dick.
It was like a big sort of shaft. 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 this, these all summer, and they were so good.
I say, there we go. Yeah. More ice.
Ice 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. Cause my local 7-Eleven in LA has one of those slushie 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.
It was insane. 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. 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. It designates fancy. If it's a very fancy place, 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 the.
Derby. It's a very Southern thing. 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 racism. I associate it with- 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, and it was either correct or incorrect, but it's a thing that exists in the world of that.
association. Tennessee Williams plays, people will have mint juleps and stuff.
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. 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.
They weren't icy before America came along, which blew my fucking mind. What's your favorite cocktail? I like anything that's sweet. I'm a child, I want a pina colada. Anywhere I go, I want-.
That's like ice cream, alcohol, basically. I mean, 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 out. Yum. 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-. But what would that do for the blood vessels? Oh, I don't know. It's just- I don't think it does.
I think it just distracts you, and so that you're not-.
Oh, you shove your tongue- Yeah.
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 Reid, there was a leaf blower going through a lot of it, so you can hear that blowing in the background, so- Ding, ding, ding. Leaf blower episode, if you haven't listened. Go back. Have a listen. 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 fucking like Inception, 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. Yeah, a heritage and origin, and American-ness.
We have built a bridge of friendship back again, with our hatred, or our avoidance of ice. I think that's to be celebrated. I like to concentrate on the positives.
Oh, sure, you do. Always.
And that's always what we should do. We should ignore the other stuff,
and just face on with the positive. Shove that under the rug.
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.
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 knees. Yeah, something would be horrible.
Your brain would be a bit muddled or something. It'd be like a more fucked up version.
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 EP? Yes, you have.
In my mind, you have become more American. Exactly. You've become more American, but less trustworthy.
Likeable. 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.
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