(GASPS)
JEFF: Ice cream. Jeez, I like every single flavor, that's the truth.
Here's the problem, if I start to eat a little ice cream...
I may not stop.
So many people like it, ah!
You know, in any given year, we can consume, worldwide,
guess how much ice cream?
Up to, like, 5,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools full,
that's how much we love it.
Is there some sort of mystery around this delicious food?
Uh, maybe. I will investigate. Mm! Mm!
(MUSIC PLAYING)
NEWSREADER 1: Kids love it, adults adore it, it is ice cream.
(CROWD CHEERING)
NEWSREADER 2: There was a time when ice cream was simple.
But times have changed.
NEWSREADER 3: All of this may be expensive and fattening, but seldom has guilt,
tasted so good.
JEFF: Jeff Goldblum here.
I'm an actor, known for my hands, my stillness and my unbridled joy,
and my ability to have a childlike sense of wonder.
Come along with me, won't you, on this sweet journey?
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(SLURPING)
-Come on. Come on in, Jeff. -Jeff Goldblum.
-Don't let me hold you back. -Are you ready
to have some ice cream fun today?
I sure am. Now I see you wearing your seat belt.
-Yes, yes. -You know,
I should proudly do the same, but somehow when I feel I'm filming...
MALE VOICE:
-(LAUGHS) Jeff, come on. -Ah, here we go.
(MUSIC PLAYING OVER RADIO)
(EAGLE SCREECHES)
(GUNSHOT)
Um, can I... can I work the music?
(ROCK PLAYING OVER THE RADIO)
I mean, I'm no DJ.
We've got a great one that has a little horse. (NEIGHS, LAUGHS)
Well, I can do, uh, an elephant sound. (TRUMPETS)
(LAUGHS)
-DEANNA: Here we go. -(GIGGLES) Okay.
Every time you have an ice cream from an ice cream truck, it's a memory.
-Yeah. -It's really the Disneyland
of sweet treats.
-Everybody loves ice cream. -Yes.
There's nothing bad about ice cream.
-Isn't it awesome? -I know.
-Hey, how many ice creams have you sold? -I'm going to venture to say
that I have definitely, definitely shared at least a million ice creams.
JEFF: And then Deanna presses a button
-and in an instant... -(ICE CREAM TRUCK JINGLE PLAYING)
...oh, my gosh, it all comes flooding back.
Listen to this music.
Isn't that awesome?
(ICE CREAM TRUCK JINGLE CONTINUES)
(HUMS ALONG)
-I... I think that's Little Brown Jug. -It is Little Brown Jug, yes.
-Ah! I knew it immediately. -(CHUCKLES)
DEANNA: That's the Pied Piper of ice cream right there.
You know, when you heard that, your eyes went like that.
You recognized that. I saw that in your eyes.
That little kid just came out.
-I'm still four in many ways. -Yeah? Are you? (LAUGHS)
JEFF: I'll tell you, it takes me back to my own formative, uh, first years.
There it is, that's Isaly's, that's in Pittsburgh,
I don't know if people remember that.
That's where I first got those sky high, there they are,
skyscraper ice cream cones.
I think that's when I first discovered peach ice cream.
Look at that. Oh, there I am, look, so happy in my plaid pants,
and give that kid that peach ice cream. (LAUGHS)
That sure looks good.
(CAR ENGINE REVVING)
JEFF: Wait and minute, wait a minute, what... Are we still in the past?
And this... this looks like Back to the Future.
Uh, well, no, in fact, here, I'll give you a clue.
(SINGING)
Deanna comes every year to this annual festival,
which celebrates '50s cars and culture, and, most importantly for us,
old fashioned ice-cream-truck-style ice cream.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(CAR ENGINE REVVING)
Okay, so let me ask you this, Deanna, can you tell
when they come up to the window, can you go,
"Mm, I know by the way you look what you're gonna order"?
DEANNA: Yeah. You can tell a classic gentleman usually would choose
like a butter pecan, or a vanilla.
Sometimes a girl that is, uh,
a little older, but she might go for the sherbet.
Your younger crowd, they love cookies and cream.
Um, well, I like French vanilla and I like fruit-flavored ice cream.
-You do? -(DEANNA GASPS)
-WOMAN: Yes. -I heard a gasp
-from Deanna. -It's the sherbet.
-Okay there, there you go.
Oh, my gosh. Taste that, see what you think of that.
That's amazing, I love sherbet.
Ice cream, for me, was pretty fancy, and the nearest grocery was pretty far,
so my mom made ice cream, and I never had sherbet,
because it was too fancy for that store.
So she learned how to make it from an old recipe book.
JEFF: Why is it that ice cream seems to be a potent trigger for memory?
WOMAN 2: I guess we always associate it with happy memories.
-Yeah. -There's a lot of pleasure comes from it.
-Yeah. -Not only does it taste pleasurable,
-I think a lot of times. -Yeah, you associate it with holidays...
-It's always a treat. -...and going on trips.
It's always a treat.
(ENGINE REVVING)
JEFF: This is so interesting. I love these old cars,
and now I got what used to be my favorite ice cream bar,
the ice cream sandwich, oh baby, baby.
And you know, it takes you back. Mm! Mm! Mm!
Oh yeah. Yeah, it's like a time machine.
Why is that? Why, why, why? I have so many questions.
Where does it come from? What's the history?
As my dad said to me once, the kid is stimulated.
-(TRUCK SQUEAKING) -We're so lucky because, you know,
if you want ice cream, you can get it
just about any place on every street corner.
-But let's go back in history. -Hello.
It wasn't always like that.
For the ancient Greeks, for instance, and the Romans,
making a refreshing icy treat meant dragging blocks of ice
off of the mountain tops and then crushing them up with honey.
Only a few hundred years after that, in China,
the Emperor enjoyed these sort of slushies made of snow and milk and spice.
Now, we go to, um...
-(GASPING) -...renaissance Italians,
and they discovered that if you mixed snow with salt,
it caused a chemical reaction that helped chill the whole mix
without freezing it, and that was a big deal.
Okay, 1843, America, in Philadelphia,
there's a woman named Nancy Johnson, she made a machine,
this hand-cranked ice cream maker that prevented large ice crystals
from forming in the mix,
creating, finally, that... that, uh, silky smooth, creamy treasure
that, thanks to modern refrigeration, and that was important,
could now be found so, so many places.
Well, you know, you throw a stick and you hit six of them.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
JEFF: Well, America,
it's still the place where pioneers dominate the ice cream market.
-You are? -Jerry.
-And you are? -Ben.
-And this is? -Ice cream.
(ALL LAUGH)
JEFF: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield still live
in the place where they started the whole darn operation...
and they love ice cream, I think, today
as much as they did in their tie-dyed and, uh, colorful youth.
What do you say we get a scoop
-of caramel almond brittle? -I think we ought to, excuse me.
And your pictures are on...
-are still on everything, right? -It's a really good flavor. Whoa!
Oh! I just saved his life.
-Chubby Hubby. -Hang on.
(ALL LAUGH)
-What am I eating? -It's non-dairy caramel almond brittle.
I'm going to sit on this, if you don't mind.
(LAUGHS)
-What's that do? -It warms it up.
What happens when you sit on something, man?
-I've never sat on a tub of ice cream. -(BEN AND JERRY LAUGH)
Is your tuchus the warmest part of the body?
Well, isn't that where they take your temp...
They used to take your temperature there
-when you were a little kid. -Oh!
-Oh, yeah. -Oh, you're right.
That's bringing some memories back, isn't it?
Yes, it does.
-(BEN AND JERRY LAUGH ) -JEFF:
Well, you know, I mean, we were familiar with traditional ice cream flavors
that have, you know, nuts in them, or...
-Right. -...chocolate chips in them.
-Yeah. -BEN: And instead of chips,
we decided to do chunks.
-Why? Where'd that come? You... -BEN: You know,
-where'd that come from... -JEFF: Yeah.
-...is that I can't taste. (LAUGHS) -(LAUGHS)
It was a well-kept secret that the chief taster
-couldn't really taste. -Yeah, and what do you have
in your nose? How uncommon... How rare is it? It's some...
-You can't smell anything? -Anosmia,
it's... it's pretty rare. You know, I can smell a little.
You know, Jerry would come up with these flavors,
they'd say they're really good,
but I can't tell what the flavor is, you have to add more flavoring.
-Right. -So, then he would keep on adding
more flavoring and I'd say,
"I still can't taste it, you got to add more flavor."
And eventually, they'd come to a level where I could taste it.
-Right. -And so our ice cream ended up
-being highly flavored. -JEFF: Yeah.
There's something in this nostalgia business
about going home again.
BEN: Right, and ice cream is home,
-I mean, you talk about comfort food. -Yeah.
I think that there might be some association with mother's milk.
-Yeah. -I mean, I've seen babies...
-in ecstasy. -Yeah, it's ecstasy
-and it's some otherworldly place. -That's... that's exactly it.
JEFF: Well, listen to this, our passion for everything that's sweet
starts early, when we're inside our mommies.
Because, in fact, babies consume more amniotic fluid
when that fluid is sugary.
Long before anybody knew anything about ice cream,
we weren't always sure, early in our species,
where our next meal was coming from...
and the sweet taste would have alerted us to foods
offering a lot of bang for their buck, so to speak.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
And a lot of calories meant a lot of energy...
which increased our chances of survival.
Now, sugar may be the, uh, leading lady, but fat, fat,
fat would be the all important and powerful sidekick.
And when the two of them are in the right chemical balance,
well, it sends a message to our brains.
That's why, in fact, when we eat ice cream,
it can make us, and we're not just imagining it, happy.
We're happy.
Now, having said that, in accordance to humanist credo,
the customer is always right, which means that some flavors of ice cream
cannot live on, they must perish.
-(GASPS) -(SINISTER MUSIC PLAYING)
Am I just hearing that gothic music in my head, or is that playing?
Who's following me? That's what I want to know.
Is that a raven over the flavor graveyard? Aye, aye, aye.
This is the final resting place, I guess,
of, uh, the unbought, the too little bought flavors. Oh, boy.
Well, "Oh Pear, Oh Pear, a mixture of mirth,
"all nannies did weep."
Oh, I guess they were thinking nannies too.
"All nannies did weep when you left of this Earth."
It lasted less than a year. Oh, taken in its infancy,
that's the saddest thing I've ever heard.
Well, Peanut Butter Me Up. I love anything peanut butter myself
and I, like Ben Cohen, like a chunky peanut butter.
Um, "Since PB Me Up went under, nobody seems to miss it.
"Which is why it's in this graveyard, which everybody loves to visit."
Hey, who was in charge... (LAUGHS)
Anyway, uh, there we go.
We grieve for all the... all the flavors, but after all, this world is fleeting.
Hmm. Hey, maybe I could come up with a unique ice cream...
-(THUNDER RUMBLES) -...uh, flavor.
Oh, I just felt a drop of water. Mm, nice. I better get out of this Vermont...
(SNIFFS, GASPS)
...fresh air, before... before anything too natural happens
and, uh, make some ice cream.
Yeah, that's... that's what I'm gonna do.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Salt & Straw always has a line out, even on a cool day.
-Middle of the winter at 10:00 a.m. -Yeah.
This is our first date and I wanted to impress her.
-Their flavors are very unique. -Really unique.
-Very unique.
-Black olive and goat cheese? -The caramel corn on the cob?
It's weird, there's corn in there.
(BOTH GIGGLE)
JEFF: Tyler Malek. Oh, boy, he's the creative genius
behind the ice cream company, Salt & Straw,
and he's pushing real hard at the frontiers of flavor.
TYLER:
And there it is, bone marrow ice cream with smoked cherries.
Beautiful.
-What the heck is this? Wait a minute. -This is where we get a little... (LAUGHS)
Crickets, crickets.
-TYLER: These mealworms are just dried. -JEFF: Yes.
TYLER: And you can eat them. They almost taste like malt.
-Have you had like a malted milkshake? -JEFF: I love a malted milkshake,
-are you kidding? -TYLER: Yeah, yeah.
Mm, crispy.
-Yes, malt, yes. -TYLER: These are some dried crickets.
These are a little bit more nutty, kind of like a cross
between like maybe an almond and popcorn.
-Mm! Well, I love anything crunchy... -TYLER: Yeah.
-...and I love salty. -Yeah.
And then this one you can smell.
So, this is one we're working for a Halloween ice cream with.
It's pig's blood.
-This is pig's blood? -TYLER: It's a great base.
Once we cook it with some spices, a little bit of chocolate,
it creates a pretty intensely beautiful ice cream base.
JEFF: Now, here's the deal, Tyler is going to help me
create an ice cream that he wants to call Goldblum.
But we have to go for a long walk in the woods, he says,
to expand my taste buds and my mind
with all kinds of far out, trippy edibles.
Uh, okay.
Hmm. I hope I don't wind up getting baked into a gingerbread house.
-TYLER: Welcome to the Pacific North West. -JEFF: This is so...
-fantastic. Just listen to it... -TYLER: Yeah.
...for a second.
TYLER: Food in general, it's very evocative.
And you know, you go back thousands and thousands of years to,
-when we were hunter and gatherers, right? -Yes.
Like, you have to remember where your food is and what's around you
and you also have to be able to identify and know what's good for you
and what's gonna poison you.
My God, do you think we can go under this tree?
TYLER: This is like going into the... the new world,
-the fairy land. -This is like going into a new world,
the fairy land.
So, these are beautiful, they're about to be, uh,
-they're going to be salmonberries soon. -Yes.
You can see it's about to turn into a berry there.
We get the flavor of the flower and the flavor of the berry,
-all in one bite. -(EXHALES)
Just the pop of color can bring, it's gonna elevate everything.
So, this on top of a cheesecake or, you know, like a cake.
-Um... (LAUGHS) -Why'd you start talking about cheesecake?
(BREATHING HEAVILY)
-And it's still got that sweetness. -Oh, my golly.
-Mm-hmm. -Wait a minute, I had...
Now I'm very surprised.
You ever learned to talk to the animals?
(IMITATES BIRD)
-What bird is this? -(COCK CROWING)
That's incredible.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Isn't this known as the Devil's Triangle, this part of the forest?
-(LAUGHS) We have oxalis here. -Wait a minute,
-I like that, "Oxalis Goldblum," yeah. -TYLER: Oxalis Goldblum?
It's got the same acid as rhubarb.
I want to work with that, I think if we make an ice cream together,
-we should use that. -Love it.
-It's beautiful. -What's that called again?
-Oxalis. -Oxalis?
-Oxalis? It sounds like a drug... -Oxalis, it sounds cool.
...something that you'd call a topical cream.
-TYLER: Yeah. -But, oxalis...
See if the doctor says it's right for you.
(TYLER LAUGHS)
JEFF: Yes, yes, they call me mad at the institute
but, uh, I think we now have everything we need
in order to concoct a flavor that captures an essence,
a very strong story from this particular forest.
Whose woods these are, I think I know...
Hey, maybe they're mine and now I give them to you.
These are the ingredients we picked earlier today.
(GRINDER WHIRRING)
-Perfect. -I love it.
Oh!
-Yeah. -It smells like the forest floor
-from this morning, yeah. -Mm!
-TYLER: Oh! -Oh!
-Cool, beautiful. It looks so good. -JEFF: I see.
So, we've got two ingredients, we've got ice cream base,
-we've got oxalis juice. -(JEFF SIGHS)
(LAUGHS) At this point we just add a little bit at a time.
-JEFF: Okay. -TYLER: Stir it together.
And we're going for a beautiful seafoam green color.
-JEFF: Okay. -And a delicious flavor.
-And taste? Yeah, yeah. -Mm-mm-mm-mm.
-TYLER: Probably more. -Oh, that's fantastic.
TYLER: Right now, it's got the perfect texture to start integrating
-some other ingredients into it. -Oh, I see, I see.
-This is like when you make lasagna. -TYLER: Mm-hmm.
-JEFF: Don't you do something like this? -TYLER: Yeah, yeah.
Bye flower. Oh, sweet. It's a little trick, I'll show you,
-you just tap, tap it. -TYLER: Yeah.
Oh, it's perfect, it fills in there nicely.
Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa!
TYLER: And we'll top it off with just a little bit more ice cream.
JEFF: Yeah?
-Yeah. -TYLER: Cool.
-JEFF: Yeah? Look at that. -TYLER: Very nice.
-That's what I call a beautiful... -TYLER: Good job, your first ice cream.
-JEFF: Well, it's... -You did really good.
-We're like the Wright Brothers. -(LAUGHS)
Perfect. (LAUGHS)
I guess our time at Salt & Straw has come to a close.
They're going to have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming.
His ice cream is so amazing, it captures the essence of a person,
or a time, or a place. It tells a story, as he says,
and the ice cream that I helped him make, I guess, tells a story
that'll mean something to me.
I don't know if anybody else is gonna get some of the same ideas from it.
Well, anyway, we got to test this ice cream out somewhere.
I wonder where we're going to do it?
Well, oh boy, here's a 45,000-ton clue.
This is one of the biggest and most advanced aircraft carriers
in the US Navy, we're looking at the USS America.
And it's armed with a secret weapon...
ice cream socials.
-DANIEL: You salute with your right hand. -JEFF: Okay. If you're right-handed,
-or just any time? -Always with the right hand.
Always with the right hand? Why is that? So your left is free for the ice cream,
-I guess? -Yeah, that's a very good idea.
These ice cream socials, I'd never heard of such a thing, but,
-it's a long history in the services? -It is, it's kind of a Navy tradition,
it's a morale piece, everybody likes ice cream.
You know, I mean, a ship like this, we carry, you know,
1.8 million gallons of fuel to drive the ship,
a 101.3 million gallons of fuel to fly the aircraft,
and about 600 gallons of ice cream.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
I hear something.
Could that be our ice cream forklift? I don't know.
Wow.
Hi, is that for me? It is?
Wow, that's somewhat of a smaller sized shipment.
Well, you know, Tyler doesn't mass produce,
he's, uh, he's an artisan,
so I guess everybody is getting kind of a... like a sample.
Hey! How you doing, Jeff? I'm a USS America Chow Boss,
I'm here to receive the ice cream.
-USS America Chow Boss? -Yes, sir.
We want to take it down and get it stored in our sub-zero freezers.
I'm going to follow you because I don't want to... (STAMMERS)
...disrupt the chain of custody here, I want to keep my...
I want to eyeball this.
And you probably have a big freezer, don't you?
We do, over 2,000 square feet
-for our walk-in unit. -Really?
And we also have one just separate for our actual ice cream
that we keep on board, all right?
Go ahead and send it down.
JEFF: Get this, the US Navy's love affair
with ice cream, began during World War II.
As the battle raged in the Pacific,
sailors were fed by a separate, floating ice cream factory,
that spat out ten gallons of ice cream every seven minutes.
Doctors even prescribed ice cream for combat fatigue
and a tradition got started of so-called "ice cream socials" that,
for the troops ever since then, has been a tonic of sorts, wink-wink.
-(LAUGHS) -(BELL TOLLING)
Wow, that's four... four... What I call four bells.
-You know what that means? -What's that?
Squid attack.
Squid attack! Squid attack! (CHUCKLES)
MALE VOICE: The motion picture screen explodes
-with unprecedented power. -At ease. At ease, Goldblum.
-Stand down. -MO: That was perfect.
JEFF: Focus, focus.
JEFF: Oh, baby.
It's time to unveil the ice cream that I made with Mr. Tyler Malek.
Ooh! Showtime, showtime. (LAUGHING)
Look at me.
(SINGING) Anchors aweigh my boys
(LAUGHS) That's all right, okay. Now, who wants this?
Hi, everyone, hi.
May I offer to this ice cream social... I handed out a little
of your delicious flavors, but I brought a flavor of my own, this is it.
So, as you taste this melting ice cream, so we... Let's taste it now.
Does anything occur to you?
-MALE VOICE 1: Caramel. -MALE VOICE 2: Caramel.
JEFF: There's caramel in there?
-Possibly so. -I thought it tasted of lettuce at first.
Lettuce-y, of the forest, it's chlorophyll greens,
yes, yes. You're from the south.
-That's right. -JEFF: Does it take you back
to those moss-covered trees in any way?
-Absolutely. -JEFF: Really, who are you with?
I'm with my momma and, uh, she told us to go outside as kids,
gather up snow and make snow cream.
We had no clue what she was talking about, but...
it tasted real sweet like this.
-JEFF: Really? -It's good.
JEFF: Whether it's the new Goldblum flavor,
or the old, reliable rocky road,
all ice cream seems to be able to do something mysterious
when we close our eyes and are guided by a masterful regression therapist.
How old are you?
-Like, eight. -JEFF: Yes, eight.
-Where are you? -San Francisco.
-San Francisco? -We went to Ghirardelli's
and had a giant ice cream sundae.
-It takes me back... -JEFF: Yeah.
...to when I was a child.
-Yes? -MAN: And my grandfather,
he's putting in ingredients, the milk and the sugar,
we even got a little bit of snow that's coming down in North Carolina.
-It takes me back to my grandparents. -JEFF: Yes?
When I was young, about seven or eight,
I would go visit them in the summers
and they would stock their freezer full of ice cream
and I would have whatever flavor I wanted.
Gee, that's sweet, sweet, sweet.
JEFF: The US Navy has wisely recognized this, that these kind of memories
can create a pang, or a twinge, or an ache of nostalgia.
And nostalgia can transport us back to times of gladness.
It doesn't just trigger our memories, it triggers real feeling.
It was often thought that nostalgia was a bad thing,
it was once considered to be an illness...
something from which homesick soldiers suffered on the battlefield.
But nostalgia can be a potent psychological force for an uplifting.
Studies have shown that it can improve self-esteem...
and make us feel connected to the people for whom we deeply care.
What have we learned about ice cream? Well, I tell you this,
we know that too much of it's no good,
we don't want to be a chubby hubby, we want to eat the Chubby Hubby,
we want to enjoy the Chunky Monkey, not become a chunky monkey.
In any case, here's what we know...
it's like a time machine, this lovely, sweet treat,
in that it can take us back to a time
when we first experienced it and when we were happy.
But it's not just about the past, it's about now.
When going through tough times, or if we have challenges, you know,
it has the power to give us comfort.
And, uh, when you look at this, maybe you see a torch
that lights the way into a brighter future.
So, lady ice cream, I say...
(SINGING)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(MUSIC PLAYING)