Ologies with Alie Ward - Capsicumology (CHILE PEPPERS) with Paul Bosland

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Scoville units. Nightshades. Hot ones. Sweet ones. Scandalous data. Pull up a seat for a wild, hot ride through New Mexico. Pepper expert, horticulturist, and Capsicumologist Dr. Paul “The Chileman��� Bosland of New Mexico State’s Chile Pepper Institute dishes up stories of how chile peppers got from the wild into your mouth, what parts of peppers are the hottest, why mild peppers don’t get enough credit, how to grow peppers at home, how to recover from the burn, some lore behind your favorite hot sauces, red vs. green, Guiness World Records, Ig Nobel Prizes, why you can’t handle peppers but your mom can, hot foods in hot places, seeds, walls, piths, myths, bigger lips, pepper roulette, and so much more. Also: I abuse myself with Ashes to Ashes.  Follow Dr. Bosland on Google Scholar A donation went to NMSU Chile Pepper Institute Visit the Chile Pepper Institute website and online store and follow them on Instagram More episode sources and links Other episodes you may enjoy: Gustology (TASTE), Evolutionary Anthropology (METABOLISM), Thermophysiology (BODY HEAT), Dolorology (PAIN), Foraging Ecology (EATING WILD PLANTS) with @BlackForager, Ethnoecology (ETHNOBOTANY/NATIVE PLANTS), Pomology (APPLES), Cucurbitology (PUMPKINS), Scatology (POOP), Allergology (ALLERGIES), Optical Technology (HISTORY OF EYEGLASSES + MODERN DAY VISION), Ophthalmology (EYES), Nomology (THE CONSTITUTION), Genocidology (CRIMES OF ATROCITY) 400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topic Smologies (short, classroom-safe) episodes Sponsors of Ologies Transcripts and bleeped episodes Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes! Follow Ologies on Instagram and Bluesky Follow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTok Editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake Chaffee Managing Director: Susan Hale Scheduling Producer: Noel Dilworth Transcripts by Aveline Malek  Website by Kelly R. Dwyer Theme song by Nick Thorburn  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oh, hey, it's the lady from the kettlebell workout video who pretends to be more tired than she is, so you don't feel bad at home. Allie Ward, let's turn up the heat, but also the flavor in the history, shall we? I love this episode. I want you to hear it. Let's get to it. Here's the deal. A few weeks ago, I went to New Mexico, and I'd had this ologist on my list for many, many years,

and I needed to meet with them in person. So I took Jarrett, we call him your pod mother. we headed down a dusty highway to New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. This is kind of a sleepy town in the southeast corner of this state. And I was so excited. I was honestly not prepared. We're in all black. My God, it's hot.

Passing this beautiful building that has paintings of peppers. Oh, does it say Chili Man? Oh, my God, that's amazing. You must be nearby. A license plate? This is Chili Man. I was prepared with information, though. So this ologists studied plant genetics from undergrad until his PhD, and for decades has led the chili breeding program at the university.

He's been a regents professor of horticulture, a distinguished achievement professor, and a director of the nonprofit Chili Pepper Institute. And yes, he is known all over the world as Chili Man. Dr. Pepper was taken. Chili Man it is. So once we saw this custom license plate on his red truck, we knew we were in the right place. We rounded the corner in this sweltering gravel parking lot to a door marked Chili Pepper Institute, which boasted not only a gift shop, but air conditioning. You found us.

I found you. What's up? I'm Ali Ward. Nice to meet. This is Jared Sleeper. I also at Pluckus. Hey, y'all. How are you?

It's cooler in here, isn't it? We went to a nearby classroom, and we chatted all about the shape of pepper. the history of breeding, their origins in the wild, their shocking climate needs, world records, his thoughts on hot ones, red versus green. The hottest part of the pepper, cures for the burn, and much more. But first, thank you to all the patrons who support ologies for $1 or more a month at patreon.com slash ologies and submit their questions before we record. Thank you to everyone out there wearing ologiesmerch from ologiesmerch.com. And thanks to everyone spreading the word about smollogies. Those are our kid-friendly and classroom-safe episodes.

their own feed. You can just look for Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. And of course, thank you to everyone who reviews the show. I read them all. I pick a spicy one each week. Like this one from Allie Outside, who wrote, this podcast will reignite your childlike wonder and broaden your perspective like nothing else will. All the outside, you're about to know a lot more about peppers, as is everyone else. Also, thank you to sponsors of ologies who make it possible to donate to a cause of the ologist choosing each week. Okay, capsicomology. Comes from the Latin capsa, like a capsule, to contain because a pepper is like a box that holds its seeds. Although this is contested.

I know people have argued about this drunk, but the Greek has a similar sounding root and it means to gulp down. So really, is it a box that holds seeds? Is it to gulp down? It's really capsu. It's in the mouth of the beholder. But let's get into why you can't handle peppers, but your mom can. the old versus the new peppers, hot foods and hot places, Scoville units, nightshades, seeds, piths, myths, bigger lips, pepper gambles.

And if you stick around to the end of the show, I'm going to hurt myself with hot sauce. We're going to give it a try. I'm recording this before it happened. I hope these aren't my last words. But so much more too with author, retired professor, horticulturist, and beloved legend in the world of pepper. capsicomologist Dr. Paul, the chili man, Bosland. And we're in South New Mexico. Correct.

Like, we're pretty close to Texas, right? Very close, 40 miles away. 40 miles away. And that means Mexico, too. Yeah, it's hot down here, man. Yes, it is. It's 101 out there. It's going to be 106 today, 107 tomorrow.

So it's summertime here. And people ask, well, chili peppers must like that, but they don't. What? They're actually native to tropical rainforest. They want it 68, 72 degrees with a gentle rain every three days. And what we have done as humans adapted them to grow here. Okay. That was my first question because technically it's the first day of summer and it's already

100 degrees. But we were driving here from Santa Fe. And we went through Hatch, which I realized what must be named for the Chile, right? Is Hatch the Capitol? Oh, that's a very interesting story. hatches a town, and early on, for hundreds of years, people have been growing chilies in New Mexico. And so in northern New Mexico, they have what we call land races. Farmers have saved seeds for hundreds of years.

And so if you get Chimayo, Lelarde, they're named after the valleys. Those are the land races. Here at New Mexico State University, in 1888, we became a university. We hired a horticulturist, and his name's Fabian Garcia. And that's where we're at the Fabian Garcia Science Center. center. And so he began to look at all these different kind of horticultural crops. He introduced pecans to the area. Because he was bilingual, he wrote to Spain and got onion seed, and he introduced sweet onions. And those are the Vidalia sweet onions are derivatives of the seeds he got. He looked at apples,

peaches, but he realized that the only chili peppers being grown were in home gardens in the backyards, and only Hispanics were eating them. So he said, if I made a chili pepper that's milder, more uniform, could I get non-Hispanics to eat them? So he began a breeding program. He crossed three different types of chilies. One is called chili passilla, kind of a long green turns to brown, a chili Colorado, which is a small red one, and then one called chili Negro, which goes from green to black. And he came out with a new pod type, released it, and it was a big hit. They loved it. Everybody started to grow it. Nobody had seen that, so we call it a new Mexican pod type. coming from here. And according to one of Paul's many papers, New Mexico State University has a long

history of chili pepper improvement, which began in 1888 with this Dr. Fabian Garcia. And he was a Mexican-American who, after being orphaned at the very sweet tender age of two, moved with his grandmother to what became the territory of New Mexico. And he was a member of the very first graduating class of the university and then went off to Cornell to study plants. He returned to New Mexico State to keep working on peppers. And the work he did to cultivate what's called the New Mexican pod type has changed the world of peppers and spice ever since. And so to answer Hatch, Hatched is not a chili variety. It's just a town where they were grown. And so for many years, I've tried to get people to call it a New Mexican pod type. But for some reason, the press, the media, call it Hatch

chili. So Hatch has just become the name for Green, New Mexico, Green, Chili. And speaking of names. How are we spelling this word? Everyone, is there a consensus? C-H-I-L-I-L-I-I-E? Is there a Y in it? What's happening? And we choose C-H-I-L-E, the Spanish form, because the word comes from the Aztec language, and it was chill. They didn't have a written language, but when they talked about chili peppers, we had chitapin, which meant the flea chili, Chipotle, smoked chili. So the Spanish took chill made it into a noun by adding the E. C-H-I-L-I is the Texas dish with beans and meat. And if you go to the store and you buy C-H-I-L-I powder, you get C-H-I-E powder plus

onion, garlic, and other things. So you always buy C-H-I-L-E powder if you only want the chili. And then the British add extra letters and all their words. And so they can't even spell flavor rights. It's like, leave you out of it. We got enough letters in there. Exactly. So yeah, chili, C-H-I-L-E really do have meanings in the industry now.

Consider yourself informed. So technically, including the wild peppers, there are about 25 or 30 species, but according to sensory properties of chili pepper heat, and its importance to food quality and cultural preference, Paul's 2017 paper in the journal Appetite, the cultivated peppers, the ones on shelves in bellies, usually fall into one of 14 pod types across five species. Fruisans, baccetum, and pubesins. That one's named for the hairy leaves of the plant. But there's also the Chinense species,

including the habaneros and scotch bonnets, which are neither Asian nor Scottish. But there are hundreds of types of peppers, like the jalapinos, the bell peppers, the cherries, the Poblanos. Those are the species Capsican anam. That's the most common. Who knew? Paul? What is that New Mexico pod type? Because some of us, when we think of a pepper, and it's shaped like a bell, it's kind of more softball size. And then there are long, skinny, skinny ones. So where is the New Mexico shape? Is it long, is it skinnier than it is wide? It is. And the typical or the standard New Mexico chili pod is what the growers would like in the industry. It's about six inches long, about an inch and a half where the

stem comes on, comes down to a straight point, and there's only two cells. A bell pepper has four cells or locials, we call it, they give it to that square. New Mexico chili, they only want two, because they want it to lay flat when they can it or freeze it. So two cell, about six inches. But we do have the world's biggest chili pepper called Newmex Big Jim, which is in the Guinness Book of Records. It's like 13 and a half inches long. So they can get quite big. Too big. And are those eaten, or are they ornamental? Oh, they're eating for sure. Yes, yes. Yes, we now have chilies that are only for green chili and chilies only for the red side. And then we have a very unique market is where we have the red chili with no heat.

That becomes paprika. And so they dry it down and it becomes the number one red food coloring agent. How come no one knows that paprika is a pepper? I feel like that is under the radar. Well, that's why we have the Chili Pepper Institute to educate the world about chili pepper. Is that my ambition? Well, okay, so something that a lot of people told me to ask you, like straight off the bat before I even asked your name was like a drum roll, red or green.

That is apparently a New Mexico question that people need to be asked is red or green. Are these factions of chili pepper lovers that like you either like red or green or I understand you can get at Navidad, which is Christmas, which is a mix of both or side by side? So there are chilies that are red but they start out green. there are chilies that are green and then also stay green, right? So red or green chili, what does that question mean? Well, that's the official New Mexico question. And that's because when you go into a restaurant, the server will ask you, red or green. And that's where you meant Christmas, you know, I want both. But green chili and red chili have very different flavors. And

you may not realize when you've been ordering over the years, I prefer red or I prefer green because you've tasted those differences, and subconsciously you've selected for them. And so with green chili now, the processors want a thicker wall. It has to be flavorful, of course. But with red chili, they like them a much thinner wall, so they'll dry in the field more, and it doesn't cost as much to dehydrate. So it's kind of an economic thing. But in the past, it was like dual purpose.

And if you have them in your home garden, pick some green, let them turn red, and then you have the red chilies. Okay. This was news to me. but red and green chilies can be the same pepper, but one is just harvested earlier. And in New Mexico, for example, green chilies get picked two months after being planted, but red chilies just grow for an extra month or so. And they used to plant them as all one crop, and then they go out and pick half of the peppers

on each plant and then let the rest mature. This was called a dual purpose crop. But now they just plant them in different fields and they harvest them when the time is appropriate. So red versus green sauce. They could technically be made with the same peppers, with the red being a little hotter, earthier, maybe a little smokier, well, the green has more acid and more citrus tang. Red sauce tends to be served chilled. Green might be warmed up. However, each secret recipe may combine different green or red peppers to sort of suit the flavor profiles they're going for. But yeah, generally speaking, red is hotter. I'm a red myself. And so for me personally, in our household, I'm a red chili guy.

my wife who's a native New Mexican is a green chili person. And that's usually the opposite. Hispanics like red and non-Hispanics like green. But you guys make it work somehow. Yes, right. Yeah. Well, the best story is I went to UC Davis, and I met my wife there, and when we got married, she brought a ristra into our kitchen.

And I said, what do you want this dust collector for? I don't understand. She goes, oh, you don't understand. It means a lot to me being from New Mexico to have this chili ristra. And now that I've lived here 40 years, yes, we have two restra. on our front porch. Okay, this was something I was going to ask you also straight out the bat. I didn't know it was called a Restra, but I'm seeing them around New Mexico, and they're

ornamental, almost like how you would, as an Italian, we grew up without, but with garlic. But it's almost like a bouquet, a cascading bouquet of these dried chilies, usually seen outside. What does that signify or what does that mean? Restra means string. So it's a string of chilies. And in the past, that's how you would store them. You would string them and hang them.

and then you'd go out and pick them off to there to make your sauces and stuff. And it became like a welcome symbol because in those days, people lived very far apart. And so you'd be on your horseback all day and you see a house out on the horizon, you'd go up to it. And if they had a restra, you could knock on the door, spend the night. But if they didn't have a re-strel, it meant they had a very bad season and you would be a burden. So don't bother them. You would go on to another house to see if they had the re-stress because that was a symbol of they had a bountiful season, so you wouldn't be a burden. That is so beautiful. I had no idea. That is such a beautiful sentiment.

And the origin of chilies in New Mexico, we say the Spanish brought it up when they came up the Rio Grande. But my theory is that we may have had chilies here before them because it was a medicinal plant. First, early on, it wasn't a vegetable or a spice. It was a medicinal plant. What the early Aztecs used it for was a painkiller. The Capsizanoids gives you a pain. And so your body produces endorphins to block that pain. So it was a painkiller. And so they used it as a toothache medicine, sore muscle liniment. And even today, if you go into a pharmaceutical store, you'll see things like capsaicin,

not spelled like the compound, but it's pronounced the same. Heat, H-E-E-T, and these have chili heat as the active ingredient. Do anthropologists can they trace coming up from the rainforests up Central America to maybe Aztec regions or any idea if you were to trace the journey? Sure. It looks like that the first original chili peppers were

in Bolivia, Peru, that area, and then before there were humans in the Western Hemisphere, birds spread them all around. And so even in Arizona, there's wild chiltapines and they go all the way from Arizona down to the tip of Chile. And so that was the

mother of all chilies, I like to say. And from that, humans selected at all the other pods you see. And so that was the original chili pepper, was that small tiltapine. And now birds play a huge part in pepper distribution, I understand, partly because they can't taste the heat. Exactly.

They don't have the receptors. The mammals have it. And, you know, the reason, I always don't want to say that the plant developed this because that's too anthropomorphic. But the Cepasinoids kept mammals from eating the fruit and the seeds. because the seeds are destroyed.

So one reason why your chili plant asks you to just stay the hell away from it, chemically speaking, is that mammals can chew, and that breaks down the protective cellulose wall of the chili seed, and that exposes them to stomach acid, renders them useless reproductively as far as the pepper is concerned. But guess who does not chew, coincidentally? Well, with birds, they don't taste the heat, and it goes through, and they can spread the seed, and with a fertilizer pellet, with it. or they drop.

So there's been an evolutionary symbiotic relationship between birds and chilies where the chili really doesn't want mammals to eat it. They don't want us to eat it, but we've embraced it and we take care of it and we grow it. And so this kind of loves us now too. And then cultivate it to where it is so hot that people can get, from what I'm told in the gift shop, ashes to ashes is also called rashes to rashes because you can break out in hives because it's so hot. Which is the hottest one?

The absolute hottest is ashes to ashes. That one has 63% pepper mush of the 7 Pot-Prima pepper. That's one of the world's super hot, which is over a million skull-hole units. It's hotter than the ghost pepper. We do have samples of that also. Did you want to try a sample? No, I trust you. I'm trust you.

I'm trusting you guys with my life. Yeah, it's too hot. Literally ashes to ashes. Yeah. I love that it's liquid preemption, essentially. It is. It comes with the morning label on the bottle. We also love them we call it rations to rations. Our boss, one of her past boyfriends came in and he tried it.

That night, he broke out of hives. He was covered in rashes because he had an allergic reaction to how much kept safe sin is in there. Oh, my God. Imagine if that was your cause of death. No, literally. That's an interesting thing. There are people you've seen that can eat really, really hot chilies. Yeah.

And other people say, oh, gosh, I can't eat them because jalapeno is too hot for me. Yeah. And that's because we're all different. Every human being is different the way we sense heat. And what it is is we have heat receptors in our mouth and in our throat. And the more heat receptors you have, the more sensitive you are to the chili heat, which I say makes you a connoisseur in that way. That way you can taste all these subtle differences among the chilies.

but if you have a lot of receptors, that means you're more sensitive. If you don't have many receptors, you can't taste that subtle difference, but you can eat hotter chilies. So sometimes people are saying that they are tougher, but really, they might just have fewer receptors. Exactly. This is the same for bitterness, too, people who are like, I only drink my coffee black, and it's like, well, that means you can't taste as well. Exactly.

Another thing is, each capsaicinoid reacts different. You know, there's 24 different capsizzoids that cost chili heat. And some will react to the tip of your tongue, your lips, some mid-palette, some in the throat. And you will react to these different capsizanoids differently. And I always like to tell Australia, I had a researcher from India and China visiting me, and I took him to lunch. And as we were eating Mexican food, New Mexican food, the Indian fellow says, you know, I like really hot food. But when I go to China, your food's too hot. And the Chinese guy goes, the same with me.

I love really hot food. But when I go to India, I can't eat it. It's too hot. And so culturally, they have different sets of receptors. And so the Indian chilies is what the Indian culture likes. And then in China, or Cessuan, is what they like. So this story is very adorable to me. It sounds like three kids sitting in a cafeteria table comparing their packed lunches.

Your pod mother, Jared, piped up with a good one here. It seems kind of interesting to me that so many cultures that seems like the countries are very hot, you know, like eating a hot Thai soup that's like hot water with hot hot peppers while it's humid and hot out. What's up with that? That's a good question. And I wrote a paper about that because the people say, oh, you sweat and you cool off. Well, no, if those countries, the humidity is high and sweating doesn't do it. It turns out what it is is the capsizanoids get rid of intestinal bugs, swarms.

And in these climates, you can't preserve food as well. Like in Norway, you kill a reindeer, you can hang it out all winter. But in these warm climate, food spoils. And the chili capsizzoids will work on bacteria. parasites and stuff. And so it keeps you healthy that way. And that's why they do it. Does that mean that works then also like preserving the meat before you eat it?

Yes, yes, exactly. That was a tradition was to put red chili on meat and dry it. And that way it would be preserved. This is true, folks. And if nobody believes you, first off, I do. But if nobody else does, go ahead and read a passage from the 2023 paper, applications of capsaic in food industry, functionality, utilization, and stabilization. from, of course, the journal critical reviews in food science and nutrition.

And it says that the bioactive compound, capsaicin, is the main substance responsible for the spiciness of peppers. But besides its taste and the physiological effects that we're all familiar with, it exhibits good antioxidant activity and antimicrobial activity against food-borne pathogens and viruses. Now, as for why Taco Bell hot sauce can clean pennies, well, that's not. The peppers. That's just the acidity of the vinegar added to the fermented chilies, folks. But who doesn't love a clean, spicy penny? What about fermentation and chilies? I noticed, I think we drove in and there was a fermentation station. For hot sauce, what you do is you take the chilies,

but usually cayens can be jalapenos, add salt and let them ferment. And then that fermented is called mash. And it's what we make hot sauce out of Louisiana hot sauce. We have a big fermenters here to make cayenne mash, to make Louisiana, Franks, hot sauces. We don't do Tobasco because we can't grow them here. The fruits are so small, they're pretty much all imported. Oh, what peppers are in Tabasco sauce? I had to find out. You know what they are? Tabasco peppers. That's just a pepper. Well, there you go. Also, did lawyers get involved and try to trademark the name of a type of pepper? They did. It was messy. We don't need to get into it. But these tiny hot things, They are harvested, they're mashed up with salt the same day they're picked, and then Tabasco puts them in old whiskey barrels, and they're aged.

They just sit there in the dark for like three years before then they get strained and they get thinned with vinegar. This one time in college in Santa Barbara, my friends and I, we were skulking around a pier at night just trying to catch a vibe of like the lost boys. And my buddy, Mikey Gonzalez, he found a big empty bottle of Tabasco left by some fishermen near a pile of scales. and guts, and he waved it around to show us. And as I hollered, dude, gross. The Tabasco hit me in the face, just splashes of it from probably 10 feet away, in my face and in my open mouth. The first time I ever had Tabasco, when given the choice, I opt for not Tabasco. I just can't shake it still. I was wondering that because I know that here you worked on the ghost pepper, which is also called the boot jolokia the boot jolokia which was developed in northeast india right yes and then i also wondered

about when i accidentally chew on like a Thai chili that's in a stir fry and then suddenly i like have to go like dunk myself in an ice bath are these all derived from south american chilies and then they've just spread around the world because people move things around all chilies are native to the western hemisphere Okay. And so when Columbus on his very first voyage came in contact with chili peppers, he thought it was black pepper. And that's why he called it pepper. And he thought, of course, the natives were Indians. Yeah, this guy could not get things right.

Yeah. And so he took it to Europe. And then from Europe, the Portuguese had the trade route through Africa and Asia. And so they took it and spread chilies all through Africa and Asia. And so, yeah, they originated in the Western Hemisphere. The Bucilokia is an interesting story is that they said they had a very, very hot chili in India. And we tried to get seed just to see how hot it would be. And we never were able to do it.

And then we had a chili head that visited Assam. And he says, well, I have one here. And he said, do you want to see? We grew it. Yeah. And we grew it out and found out, oh, yes, this is very hard. So we did replicated trials with controls. And it was the very first chili pepper ever to hit one million Scoville heat units.

bonkers. So according to a 2013 article title, the arms race to grow the world's hottest pepper goes nuclear in the Wall Street Journal. That excursion to India was in 2001 when Paul collected some seeds for this bizarrely hot pepper that the Indian Army was cultivating for use in grenades. He nabbed the seeds like it was a Nicholas Cage movie. He took them back to New Mexico and he cultivated them for a few years until he had a pepper that nearly tripled. the hottest one on record, taking the crown in 2007. Bonkers. Yeah.

And so I said, why do they call it Boot Jaloki? And he says, it translates to ghost pepper. It's so hot, you give up the ghost, you die. I'll see you on the other side. And I do think that one of the creative aspects of Chili's that I love is the names of them, where it seems like they get progressively more threatening, where like you do get progressively closer to death and incineration in the afterlife, like ashes to ashes and of course the reapers that are coming out of North Carolina and stuff.

But I'm curious, you mentioned chili heads. Is this a term? Is this like a deadhead kind of? Exactly. It is. This is a subculture I didn't know about? Who are these people? They're people that love their chili peppers.

And we have members that have, instead of having a dog or a cat, they have a chili pepper plant. It's named. They take care of it. They send us pictures of it each year. Look at the fruit load I've got. They're just, they're just, they're, they're into chili peppers. Do you think that they have fewer receptors or more and they are just tougher?

I don't think, I don't think we're, there's any correlation there. Yeah, yeah. I think for me, I mean, I came here as a vegetable breeder, actually. I was hired to do vegetable breeding and I worked on coal crops, which was broccoli, cabbage. I did a little bit of asparagus, a little bit of spinach. But then I just saw chili peppers and I said, oh my gosh. I could spend my whole career here doing chili peppers and never really answer all the questions. So I tell people I put all my chilies in one basket, and I watch that basket carefully.

And so, yeah, it turns out that I think once people realize the diversity and the types and the flavors and getting back to the heat, one of the reasons we have the chili pepper institute was to explain that chilies have flavor and there's different flavors. And heat is not the thing you want to concentrate on. It's more of all these subtle flavors. And that is why when you go to Thailand, you get Thai chilies. They have certain flavors. We had a student do a study with us from Thailand. And we took her to, we have a teaching garden each year with about 150 different chilies.

And we had one out there marked Thai chili, probably from parks or burpee seed. And she took a bite and went, that's not a Thai chili? I said, well, her name was ooh. I said, ooh, if you send me some real Thai chilies, we'll grow those from now on. But people will go into the garden, especially our international students, and that's their chili. Here's my chili. They embrace them. It seems like there is so much story behind chili peppers that maybe you wouldn't hear with lettuce, for example.

There are so many stories. People have a very literal, visceral connection with them. And I'm wondering for you, were you a plant person? Were you someone who was taking care of the family garden? Or you grew up in Southern California back when it was more agricultural. Were you always really good with plants? I was. my dad was a gardener, my mom

garden, but I always wanted to do plant breeding. Since I was about eight years old, I wanted to do plant breeding. But I thought it was like a art you had to learn from somebody to find a master and then teach me how to do this. And then I saw that you could go to UC Davis and learn how to be a plant breeder or a plant

geneticist. So that's where I headed. And for future horticulturists out there, UC Davis offers a cornucopia of agricultural delights. They have asinology, they got donkey people, They got crops, flowers, vet science, and an extensive anology program for wine. What I like to tell people, chili peppers are like wine.

The first time you taste the chili pepper heats all you're going to sense. First time you drink wine, it's the alcohol. But then you'll get a little more trained palate, and you can tell red from white. Then you can tell the different whites and the different reds. And chili peppers will be the same thing. And all the words that the inologists, the winemakers use, we use in chili peppers. There's herbaceous, there's grass. there's spicy, there's citrus, and those are the subtle flavors you look for. And we actually

developed three chilies with no heat, so people would see that. And one of the best contrasts we had was with the habanero. Most people were afraid to eat the hobanero because they were so hot, but they have a very citrus, very different aroma and flavor. So we developed a habanero without the heat or very low heat called suave, which means mild and Spanish. So people wouldn't be afraid to use it and try it. And then we went one step further and made one that looks just like the habanero with absolutely no heat. And that we call New Mexico trick or treat because we say, plant it in your garden and you can give the hot one to your neighbor and you can eat the mild one and then you look macho. But what happened is early on old El Paso came to us and said,

when we make salsa, it's jalapeno flavored salsa. But sometimes we get jalapenos that are so hot, we have to blend down to get the mild and the medium. And what we do is we either add more bell pepper or we add more tomato, and that changes the flavor. If you could develop a jalapeno that had no heat or mild, but had that halapeno flavor, we could use this as a blending agent. And so we did. We released one called Numex Primavera, and there's a con, I don't know, not a contest per se, but it's called the ignoble at Harvard. Yeah. And they gave me the ignoble for making a spiceless alpani. So the Ignoble Prize, side note, it sounds mean, but it actually aims to promote engagement with science by, quote, honoring achievements that at first make people laugh and then make them think.

Winners receive a, quote, low quality homemade prize and the cash award equivalent to four cents. But the publicity. Priceless. But it was so funny because the industry rallied around me and goes, oh, these people know we have to blend in the food industry. We have to do this, you know? And so then that's where the habanero people came and said, we need a mile because it turns out habanero flavor blends very nicely with fish. And the fish tacos, the guys were using habanero hot sauce.

So they wanted a mild habanero for their fish taco trucks. And so after we did that one, a famous hot sauce maker in Louisiana came to this. Can you make us a no heat one? So we have no basco, which is a no heat tabasco. Well, when you think about chili peppers, you just think of, you know, like a scotch bonnet or a ghost pepper and you just start sweating and say, no, thank you. But if you wanted to appreciate chili peppers and make a flight at home, let's say you go to the farmer's market, you go to the produce aisle. What are some good ones to start with that are milder to notice or other flavors? Well, a lot of them are mild nowadays. It's interesting when we first started, the produce people back east said, halapenos are really too hot for our. population. We need mild jalapenos. And so that was another impetus for our Nemex primavera. And but Dow C companies produce mild versions. And so you can usually get mild versions of everything. Now because

people are saying, oh, I want that flavor. I understand what's going on. We actually have a flavor wheel like the wine one at the Institute. And I'll get you one before you leave. Oh, amazing. You can spin the wheel and you can say, oh, these are the flavors I will have in this chili. That's great. And you can rotate this big wheel's little window to expose each chili's pod type, cultivars, its heat profile, its flavors, and its uses. So if you consider yourself a pepper connoisseur, if you do not have one in your life, this is an essential tool of hyperfocus, hours at a time, just sit and looking at the wheel, spinning it, learning, loving. But the funny thing is, once you start eating chili peppers, you'll want a little more heat. Your body gets attuned to it.

And you usually, if you're a mild person when you start, you'll want medium. If you're a medium, you'll want hot. What is happening to me? And we don't know. There's two theories out there. One is that your body is like Pavlis dogs. You know you're going to eat something hot. You start producing the endorphins right now before you taste.

The other is, yeah, you kind of wear out those receptors and that the more you use them, the less active they are. And so Julia Child, it was always pitted against me because she used to say, oh, you never want to put chili peppers in your food. it kills your taste buds. And so my story would be, well, in China, it's one of the five basic flavors. That's the sixth flavor. I see.

You need bitter, sour, sweet, salty, and hot. But always remember, chili heat is like salt. If you put too much salt, you'll ruin the dish. You put too much chili heat, you ruin the dish. I'm on your side. I do think that having that little bit of a kick, I think the more pleasure and experience you can put into food, the more you enjoy what you're eating, like more sensory it becomes. And instead of just wanting to reach for more, you kind of appreciate what you have.

You know, it's funny, when I've had visitors come, the thing they couldn't believe in the United States is how many people ate in their car. They would drive through a fast food place and eat the thing. Don't they ever stop and enjoy a meal? And I said, that's a good point, you know. We just take it for granted. I'm going to zoom through McDonald's or Taco Bell and keep going and eat in the car. I said, but, you know, they all said, well, you should sit down and enjoy the meal and taste it. So I think maybe that helps with chili peppers.

Now I'm going to sit down and I'll savor this flavor. I'm trying to remember what is it called La Mesa? In Spain, they have a phrase that means sit at the table for a while. Sobra Mesa. What does that mean? Sober Mesa, side note, it means on the table. And it's just like that period after or during a meal, you're just hanging out. You're just shooting the shit.

You're listening to the people you love. making each other laugh, you're having deep convos. You're just taking it easy around a table. The best part of life, my dad used to say. Just like sit at the table. And it's funny too because Jared this morning went to go get a burrito and he sent me a picture from the car where he had absolutely showered himself with burrito juice. Oh, wow. Yeah. So speaking of eating in the car, as Americans, guilty as charge. But I want to ask about the Scoville scale. Because heat is something that people talk about a lot.

And you mentioned it's subjective. You mentioned that your receptors can kind of get burned up too. And from what I understand, the Scoville scale is determined by powdering the chili and then giving it to like five people who determine how hot it is. How does it work? Right, right. Well, first of all, Mr. Scholl will work for a pharmaceutical, company, and they made the cream heat. And so they had to standardize it. So he had to come up

away with how hot are the chilies we're going to use to make this cream. And so he said, what I'm going to do is going to be a taste test. We call it organolyptic. And so he says, I'll take five people and whatever the average is, and what I'll do is I start off with a dilution. And whatever the dilution where the people say, I don't taste it anymore, that'll be the heat level. And at the time, he just called it heat units. And so if it took 10,000 to one to dilute it, before you didn't taste heat, it was 10,000 heat units. If you diluted it 100 to 1, it was only 100 heat units. But because he came up with this method, we put his name to it, we call it Scoville heat units. So this is like inverse detection. It is a scale that relies on what experts can't taste.

I hope you're hungry for nothing. But you also get what's called tasters fatigue. You can only taste so many before you, okay, I can't really taste it anymore. And because the endorphins kick in and your mouth is done. So what we do is we use analytical equipment like a high-pressure, high-performance, liquid chromatography. And it actually sees the molecules, count some, and tells us how many parts per million we have. And 16 parts per million equal one Scoval heat unit. So pure Capsaeosin is 16 million scovil heat units.

Well, I know that there are other chili pepper breeders who, don't want to have some of their peppers independently tested. So how is that determined, especially for world records and things like that that are pretty big marketing gets? Sure. I get that question a lot. Yeah. And being a research institute at New Mexico State University, we have to do it more scientifically,

I would say. So whenever we test the Chile to see how hot it is, we do replicated trials with controls. and then that's what we base it on. And so when we test it, then we have a comparison because if you grow the chili here in New Mexico or San Diego or Toronto, it's going to have a different heat level. What do you mean?

What do you mean? What do you mean? And then we do statistics on the data we collect to see if it's significant differences. And so far, the Muruga Scorpion has been the world's hottest chili pepper. But Guinness has its own way of doing it. things, I'm not going to say it's good or bad, it's their way. But at the Chili

Pepper Institute, because they're part of a university research unit, we have to do it a certain way to, because if I go to court, I feel completely confident to say this, this, this. Yeah. So this is his diplomatic way of saying that their Scoville measurements are accurate and replicable. So as of 2016, the world's hottest pepper of record is Pepper X. It was spread by a guy named Ed Curry of the Pucker But Pepper Company. And according to a 2023 BBC article titled Guinness World Records Crown's New Hottest Pepper, Curry said that after sampling it the first time, the taste lingered for nearly four hours. And then his stomach experienced cramps so severe that he told the journalist that he was, quote, laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour

in the rain groaning in pain. There is some controversy, however, as Curry has declined to have the Pepper X's 2.7 million Scoville units independently verified at a lab like Paul's, who certify the ghost pepper as the world's then raining hottest around 2007 to 2011. Well, what was it like when you realize that the ghost pepper was over a million? We were kind of shocked because at that time, about 500,000 was the hottest chili pepper. So this one was now twice as hot. So we did the experiment again to make sure. And then when we saw that, we said, wow, you know, we've hit up one million, you know, a little over a million.

And then people, oh, you should get the Guinness record for the hottest chili pepper. And I said, okay, we'll put in and we'll see what happens. Yeah, yeah. We got it. And so it's interesting. In New Mexico, these super hots, I've called this class of super hot, anything over one million. It's not a big crop. We don't grow very many acres.

It's usually just for roadside stands. There's not that much demand, to be honest with you. But Paul hopes that undersung and more utilitarian everyday beauties can share the spotlight, like the Ahi Amarillo, which is spelled A.J.I. Ahi, which is this skinny, just a crayon yellow, sunshiny pepper, which brings this mellower spice and a nuance to dishes like Cevice. He says. But alas. Without some trophy to bear, these very scrumptious and highly palatable peppers, like the yellow

Ahi Amareal, stay in the colder shadows. It doesn't make the clickbait headlines as much, right? No, no. You mentioned something about where it's grown, and that baffles me, because you said that they like rainforest, they like 70 degrees, rain every three days. So what is it about these different taurors? Terrar? Tarwar.

Tewares. Tewa. French wear. I can never say that word. But what is it about the different soil conditions that change it? Well, that's true with any plants. And I mean, that word came from the wine industry in France, where the same grape they're made from cutting. So everyone is genetically the same. Every plant. But if you grew them in different regions of France, you've got different tasting wine. And so that word was put to other crops. And it turns out chili is the same thing. Where you grow it, there's more heat, there's higher heat, and more intense flavor in New Mexico because they're stressed.

plant of stress, and it's producing these things to kind of protect the fruit. Where in San Diego, say, it's nice, we don't have to worry about it. We don't have to put as much flavor or heat into those. And so it doesn't matter if it's hot weather. It could be too much or too little rain. And so anything in the environment that the plant senses, it has an effect, changes that flavor of the fruit. So environmental conditions can direct a pepper's flavor. It's like cultivating your own special bonsai, but painful. Can home gardeners manipulate that at all? You can, but unfortunately, if you stress the plant, you get less fruit. You may have more intense flavor. So like I tell people, if you really want to make the world's

hottest chili pepper, you grow the plant, you leave one fruit and just stress the hell out of it, and it'll be very, very hot. Well, I'm wondering, because sometimes you'll see these really, really hot ones, and they look weird. They're kind of like really bumpy texture or like a scotch bonnet seems puckered. Are the hotter ones smaller, weirder, or am I just, that's just bias? You cannot tell anything about a chili heat from the outside, I'm afraid. What you have to do is actually cut them open. And if you cut open like a jalapeno, you'll see a yellow vein where the seeds are.

That's the heat. The walls don't have any heat. And we always say it's a plant breeder's trick as you go out in the garden. you pick a jalapeno, I take a piece of the wall, has no heat, and I give you the vein. And again, it looks like I'm pretty macho. And one guy says to me, do you have any friends? And I said, well, yeah, you know, the trick only works once. But, uh, yeah.

Please people don't use that tip for evil, all right? There's enough malice in the world already. For revenge, though, that's different. And so that's what you have to do. You cut them open and you see how much. The more yellow, the hotter is. And actually, when we're doing our breeding program, that's the quick and dirty way. We just go out, cut fruits.

Okay, this one's going to be very hot. But when we get to release it, we actually grow replicated trials, run it on the HPLC, and get a real number. Can I ask some questions from listeners? Sure. Okay, amazing, because this was also on my mind. Okay, several people. Abby, Virginia Bruce, Rob H., the Cole, John Mace, Ashley Oakey, Andrew McCabe, the sassy shork, Sarah Conley, and Katie all wanted to know. Sarah said, why is it always Shishito roulette? Sassy Shorke said, how can 19 of them be mild and sweet?

The other one be so spicy. And Poblanos might be like this as well, or? And we'll have the answers to that in a second. But first, let's give to a cause if I was choosing it this week. It's of course New Mexico State's Chili Pepper Institute, the world-only international nonprofit organization dedicated to the research and education related to Capsicum or Chili Peppers. And visitors can order online from them. Two, they have so many things for sale. You can stop by their air-conditioned shop in Las Cruces. They offer over 100 different varieties of chili pepper seeds. They have books, art, jewelry, hot sauces, chili pepper swag, jam. All purchases made directly contribute to the mission of the Institute,

as well as contribute to the salaries of the student employees who are gaining this real-world experience. So we will link them at their online store in the show notes and we'll make a direct donation to the org for their efforts. Thanks to sponsors of the show. Okay, when luck be a lady who likes hot peppers, how does one win at Shoshito Roulette? A plant breeders try to make a chili that has uniform heat. What we have is something called genotype by environmental interaction, and we want very low G by E, we say. Where you ever you grow it, it'll be kind of the same heat. And with Shishito, So it was kind of like Big Jim, the old Big Jim Chili's, you never know it was going to be very hot or very mild because they didn't fix the heat. The plants were very variable.

So every seed you planted was roulette. And so it just heat those that way. You plant a seed, that plant may make hot ones or may be mild ones. I think some of the newer ones are being more uniform because unfortunately in the food industry, uniformity is where everybody shoots for. Because you used to say here, oh, it's going to be a hot season. Oh, it'll be a mild season, you know, but no more the food industry wants. And we've actually gone to no heat, New Mexican chilies, and actually putting in the capsaicin after they're canned because that way you can make it more uniform for the industry. Oh, wow.

But part of what I think is fun about Shoshito is the roulette. Exactly. You don't know what you're going to get. And so does that not vary on the plant itself? That varies from plant to plant. So you're getting a crop that has some from plant A, some from plant B. Right. We've studied how the chili plants make heat.

And what we found is that the first fruits are hotter than the later fruits. Because the capcassizenoids are made from what we call secondary compound, secondary metabolites. And so the first fruit uses up a lot of them. The next one uses whatever's left. And so as you go up, there's less and left of these secondary metabolites. And so again, the plant's protecting that first fruit because if that's all I've got, I've got to protect it. And so if you pull the fruit off, then there's more, those metabolites are there and they can get hot again. But if you grab one plant and you look at the fruit, the bottom will always be the

hottest. Really? The bot, okay. Because the peppers on the bottom of the plant grew first, and the plant treats the oldest peppers like an heir to the dynasty. Just resource dumps. The others are the runners up. So what about, oh my God, that just dovetailed to another question. One question always leads to another. Yes. And everybody has a chili pepper story. I know. When you're talking about these metabolites, are those then gathered from the soil? Does that vary depending on what fertilizer you use or what are they metabolizing them from? Right. I mean, the plants, you know, take sunlight through photosynthesis, but they also need water, minerals to make all these compounds. And so, yes, if you have a very rich soil, the plant is kind of getting spoiled. It's like you eating just candy and chocolate. You'll get big and fat.

But if we're making you work a little bit, you stay thin. And so the plants are that way too. And so actually in a garden, when you buy fertilizer, you have to look. There's usually three numbers of a fertilizer. And the middle number is for phosphorus, and that's for fruit setting. And so you always want that second number to be bigger than the first number. The first number is nitrogen, and that's for the growth. So you can use kind of a high nitrogen to grow, but then you want to get over to the

phosphorus side so they'll set fruit. And chilies are a fruit. Yes. Yes. Mike Campbell wanted to know nightshades. So chilies are specifically nightshades are related to eggplants. Yeah, it's called the solanaceous family, nightshade. It's interesting that a lot of solanaceous plants have alkaloids that are very toxic. And when humans began sampling these new foods, it would actually kill some people. And then they found some solanaceous that only bloomed at night. So the night shade. And night shade meant you die. And so there's all this. Chili's were very interesting. They wouldn't eat tomatoes when they first went to Europe because they thought they were a nightshay, the solar age, they're poisonous. But chilies were

instantly consumed because they thought they were black pepper. They mis-ID them and said, oh, they're safe. But it turns out that chili peppers never made the alkaloids in the leaves. And in the Philippines, you actually eat the leaves as a vegetable. Really? Yes. They make a famous chicken soup with them. In nightshades, these are flowering plants. They include tomatoes, eggplant, various types of peppers, of course, like bell peppers and chili peppers, potatoes, but not sweet potatoes. And because they are peppers, cayenne and paprika fall in the nightshade fam. And the alkaloids in some nightshades, like tobacco is a nightshade and the deadly nightshade plant, those alkaloids can result in

poisoning if ingested. The alkaloids are, after all, the plant's defense system against insects and other unwelcome munchers. And if you have heard some hype about avoid nightshades, you're like, what's all that about? That has been recommended by some doctors for people with inflammatory diseases or autoimmune conditions, but more data is needed. And I found a 24 paper in the journal trials titled The Evaluation of Nightshade Elimination Diet on inflammatory and rheumatologic markers of rheumatoid arthritis patients, study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. And it was just announcing that trials are starting. So it's something to keep an on and of course talk to a rheumatologist or listen to our allergeology episode with Dr. Zach Rubin.

This is a podcast. I am not a doctor. Even Dr. Bosland, we can't help you there. And let me see. Some people had questions about male or female. Cheesemonger. Doug Pace wanted to know, could we get a professional debunking of the number of lobes at the base indicating a male or female fruit? Is a four chambered or three chambered pepper? No, the chili flowers are what we say, perfect. They have both male and female parts. Aw, that's so sweet, and it's Pride Month. I love that too.

And sometimes if you open up a pepper, you see another baby pepper inside. What's happening? What has happened is, again, something in the environment has triggered a hormone imbalance, and so that fruit has been signaled somehow to make another pepper inside. And actually, sometimes the weather will be such that they can't set seeds in the fruits and you get seedless fruits. In Mexico, this is sometimes a problem and they'll have hala peals of jalapenos that have no seeds. And so everybody thinks they should have seeds, but I told them you should sell them a seedless jalapeno. Honestly. But next year you couldn't

probably provide them, but there they are. And if you're like, wait, how do they make seedless watermelon? If there are no seeds, well, you've come to the right rabbit hole and I'm going to make this quick. But seedless watermelons have been compared to a mule. They are this. They are this sterile offspring of two totally fertile varieties of watermelon, but they have to be cross-pollinated with each other's pollen by bees and nearby fields in order to create a seedless fruit offspring. And now you can enjoy that. Your cousin doesn't spit seeds that stick to your calf. Some things in the world are still good. Okay, this was a great question. You are very well-equipped to answer this. Robin Kuhn, Brennoll, Aaron Gassie, can.

Katie, Jacqueline Faglia, Julia Gray, Taylor Clinton, Franz become lavers, Brian Ang, Aaron Grassy, Leah. Want to know, in Brian's words, I am typing this question, while my fingers are still burning, like six hours and several hand-washings after crumbling half a dried scorpion pepper, Yara grew into tonight's curry. So why does heat hit so different on different parts of the human body? If I just ate the same pepper, it would burn my mouth or throat for a demon-men manifesting 20 minutes, but then it would fade. So what is happening with the hands? Halapino hands.

Why does it hurt more? How do you get rid of it? This is a very complex question. Okay. There's actually a medical term for us called Hunan hands. Okay. And that's what you get when you bear hands handle chili peppers. And so one thing we say every fall, wear rubber gloves when you start to prepare the chilies. Don't get it on your hands. First off, if you do get it on your hands, all you can do, there's two things. You wash with soap and warm water. That's probably going to work as good as anything. But preparation H kills the burn.

No. Yeah, it sounds kind of gross, but rub your hands with preparation H and it calms down. But again, we mentioned earlier that people all differ. So his sensation on his hands will be different maybe than yours or mine. And so he's just got maybe more receptors there. There's actually a story with Gordon, the chef, Gordon. Ramsey? Who's cooked the diapers?

No diapers, sir. That's smoked chicken enchiladas with pablano cream sauce. My name is Colleen. Corrine. Corrine. Colleen. Yeah, Gordon Ramsey goes to India, and there's a lady who takes the ghost pepper and rubs it in her eyes.

No. And I think this woman has no heat receptors anywhere, and so she can probably do that. She can eat it and all that. Amandita Tamoli has a massive appetite for them. Today, she's attempted to break her own world record for eating 60 whole chilies in two minutes. And And Andita,

has decided to up the ante. She's going to try to rub more than 12 chilies in her eyes. But, you know, most of us have these hints to protect ourselves. Yeah. But I've met three people that had no heat receptors in their mouth, and they can eat the hottest chili pepper, and it's like a bell pepper. But one lady was interesting.

She has them in her throat. And so she doesn't want to eat anything with chili peppers because she's afraid when that heat hits her throat, she choked the death. So she has to be very, very careful, she says. So it shows you the variation we have among us. I wonder the one in the eyes, was she a bird or something? Absolute ornithological genes. Or, you know, does she just want to be on Gordon Ramsey's TV show?

I don't know. There are other ways than rubbing a ghost pepper in your eye. But, oh, well, you mentioned preparation age. So let's get to that question that you know is coming. Let me see. What's the best way to cut the heat? Yeah, cut the heat. But no, this is the, this question was about the lower half of the body.

Oh, okay. If you have eaten some chili, and let me see, forget what. It's twice as good. It's twice as good. Yorkshire Tea Bag said, why do chilies only burn on the way in and out and not on their journey within? And then Doug wanted to know, is there something I could do to avoid the gut pain and the Johnny Cash problem, ring of fire? Please solve this burning issue. Also on the minds of patrons Alfredo sauce.

Mugda Iola, Megan Ratcliffe, and the digestion curious Cam K and UR. Gent C. And Megan Smith. Is Preparation H the answer if you have had a very hot and spicy dinner? Yeah, the heat receptors are not in your stomach and intestines. So your body senses it, but you don't feel the heat. One of the good things about eating chili pepper is it's kind of a weight loss because it moves stuff through your intestines faster. so your body doesn't have as long to absorb calories.

And so the joke was I made what I call my bootkicking brownies. I put ghost pepper in a brownie mix and they're hot and spicy. And I said, you can eat more because those calories aren't going to stay with you. You also can't eat the whole pan, probably, right? No, no, no. This is kind of a fun story. We have a Christmas dinner each year and I said, I'm going to make brownies that are spicy hot. So I made them and I tasted them at home and they were too hot.

I was going to throw them away. I thought, oh, I'll take them to see what happens. They were really, really hot. And people were, oh, my God. But people were taking them and put them in a napkin to take home. And I said, what are you going to? I'm going to take it home as a joke to my son or my family or my husband, you know. And so the very next year they go, are you going to make your brownies again?

You're going to make your brownies? And I said, okay, I will. And then we had to put a little sign by them that these are extremely hot. Be careful. But it was such a hit. I worked with the hospitality students. And they did a test. They made three batches of different heat levels, brought the public in, tasted him.

You took a survey, found out the best level. And so we used to make Dr. B's bootkicking brownie mix and sold them at the institute. But really all you need is a box of brownie mix, some ghost pepper powder, put it in, and you can make your own at home. I was going to say you could sell it in the gift shop. We should. But when I think about someone who was in California in the 60s and 70s, and they're bringing brownies to a party that need a warning.

Oh, yes. Ghost pepper is not what I would think would be in them. Exactly. And on that note, Han the Bee, Tiger Yuddy, Chivani, Rajan, Hetchel, Kam K, and Jennifer Taylor wanted to know. Han asked, I've heard that eating spicy foods can give you feelings of euphoria and a dopamine high. Is this true? And of course, people asked about Hot Ones, the show that I'm sure you're familiar with. And Jennifer Taylor wanted to know when Hot Ones.

guests describe a spice high, what's happening to them. And you mentioned endorphins. That was news to me. Is it relative to the spice? You get more endorphins? Correct. What happens is your body sends some pain. And so it wants to protect you. So it produces endorphins. So if you eat really hotter ones, you get even more endorphins produced. And so endorphin is what they call runners high. And so it gives you a good feeling. So in a sense, when you eat chilies, not only do we enjoy that flavor, you feel good. I mean, J.C. asked, this. is more of a spice question, but does eating spicy food help relieve stress and anger, etc? If that's an endorphine high, I mean, sometimes I go for a run and I feel way better.

Yeah, yeah. I guess if it feels good, then do it, right? Yeah, right. Greg Wallach, Dana, Hannah Monash, Samuel Schar, mini, mini, Ellie Taylor, first-time question asker, Katie, you are, Gentsy, Josie, I'm telling you a lot of people. Cock kitten, 69, wanted to know, in Ellie's words, is it true that, peppers are a good source of vitamin C. And if so, how can I consume one without fighting for my life during the process? And Greg Wallach wanted to know, what are some health benefits? And I

understand that there's a lutein, like, that... Lutein? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the work that you're doing in health? Right. And one of the programs we started right when I was ending my career here was to make Chili's more nutritious. We got super hot. Do we really need a three million Scoville heat unit? Probably not. But we should make them more nutritious. What we did is we released one alapeno that is four different colors. We were saying, if you put that in your Texas cornbread, you'd have confetti cornbread. It would be colorful instead of their jalapeno. But we looked at, well, vitamin C is very important.

And one bell pepper, which has no heat, has more vitamin C than an orange. So they're very, yes, they're very high. And it actually won the man a Nobel Prize for discovering the vitamin C in pepper. Paprika is actually hungry. So he gets the Nobel. You get the Ignoble. Unfair. And then vitamin A, they're very high and not vitamin A, but pro-vitamin A, carotenoids.

Our body takes pro-A, we call it, and turns it into vitamin A like carrots. And there's more vitamin A in an ounce of chili peppers than there isn't a carrot. So they're both very nutritious. But chili peppers have something like 200, 250 different compounds we know. And we looked at lutein. Lutein is good for eyesight, and you can buy it over the counter. But we thought, well, could we make a chili pepper with high lutein that could be used in the food industry? And so we released a Serrano, which is to be used in salsas.

And we called it NUMAX Lata lutein. And so we were hoping the industry would take that and mix it in their salsas, and you would get a lot of lutein in the salsas. So, yeah, they're very nutritious and very good for you. And I understand that lutein can. help with macular degeneration. There's been a connection there, which in New Mexico, I just went to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and she had macular degeneration. I didn't know that. I learned something. You should learn something every day. There I just learned something. If you want to learn more about

macular degeneration in which you lose most of your central vision, or if you just want to know about eyes, including why you have floaters. And if you're killing your eyesight with screens, you can see our optical technology episode about the history of glasses. You can also start with our excellent ophthalmology episode with eye legend Dr. Reed Wayness. Speaking of how and when to see a doctor, what about health risks? Olivia Lester wanted to know, can a chili pepper kill someone from spiciness? Is that a myth? You can, but it would take a lot. Okay. And usually your body will shut down before you consume enough. Okay. So yeah, I figured out that calculation. And I actually have a book coming out next spring from the University of California Press called Hot Pursuits, Discoveries and Adventures in

Chili peppers, and I calculated how much you would have to eat if you weighed this much. So it'll be on page something in there. Oh, that's amazing. So again, his book, Hot Pursuits, isn't out for nearly a year, but we will let you know when you can get it in your hands. And let's hand the mic over to your mother again, Cherit Sleeper. I'm here, so I get tasked. On ill effects, intentionally tear gas is, yes, Kepsaicin, how do they do that?

And can that kill you if you have too much sprayed on your face or something like that? Thank you very sleeper. Yeah. Pepper spray is what is replaced actually tear gas. And the reason is, is that humans can't override pepper heat or the capsizanoi. Some people will get high on drugs and they can override tear gas. They can fight against it. But you can't fight against the chili pepper heat.

And so it's the number one spray that police use now. Okay, tiny semantics really quick so that I don't get emails. tear gas is anything that creates tears and it fucks you up technically called a lacrimatory agent or a lacrimator and the mondland among us might recognize the word lacrimos for tearful but yeah tear gas can be brand name mace or it can be any kind of oleosin capycum aka oc pepper spray that's what they call it or chemical agents including nonivamide phenosolide bromocetone etc And so tear gas used to refer to just the human-made chemical compound sprays, but it also technically includes O.C. Or that high-concentration pepper spray. So not all tear gases are pepper sprays, but all pepper sprays are tear gases. It's a real succulent cactus situation. And wait, using that against crowds, how is that not chemical warfare? Well, under the Geneva Conventions, it is. So according to the ACLU, well, tear gas has been outlawed as a method of warfare. affair on the battlefield by almost every country in the world, that prohibition does not apply to the

domestic law enforcement officers using tear gas on their own citizens. Unfortunately, it continues, U.S. law enforcement personnel use tear gas all too often against peaceful crowds. What kind of Scovilles are they pack in? 5.3 million Scoville heat units. So like two pepper X's to the face. So who's to say when law enforcement is scared enough to use it on a crowd and when they're just mad and they're trigger-happy? Well, who's to say is the Constitution, specifically the Eighth Amendment, which protects the populace from cruel and unusual punishment. Sometimes leaving a court to decide if pepper spray is an excessive and violent use of tear gas. And that can result in multimillion-dollar damages. Now, for more on this, you can enjoy our nomology episodes on the Constitution.

or our genocidalogy episodes on humanitarian law, both of which may get you a little hot under the collar. But yeah, it can hurt you, it can blister. And so with anything, you have to, I think, be careful. Is that bear spray as well? Exactly. Grizzly bear spray. I love that one because when I give talks, I always show the different uses.

But actually, they did controlled studies with bears in cages and the scientists outside. And it did repel. and they did a survey, and most of the people that hike with pepper spray do not report bear attacks. I guess you have to hope that the bear's not from New Mexico and like spicy food, though, huh? Thank you, I'll be it all week. He really was there all week. I had 11 days, in fact, of New Mexico road trip.

Folks, I loved every minute of it. I kind of want to do more in-person interviews on road trips coming up, so let me know where to go. But yes, okay, bears. So research by Dr. Tom Smith, who was the lead author of the 2010-10. paper, efficacy of bear deterrent spray in Alaska in the Journal of Wildlife Management analyzed 83 bear spray incidents involving brown bears, like the grizzlies, black bears, and polar bears. And apparently, red pepper spray stopped bears undesirable behavior, like charging and mauling, 90 to 100 percent of the time, depending on the species of

bear. But of all persons carrying sprays, it concluded 98. were uninjured by bears in close range encounters. So yeah, bear spray. It works. And we do have a few orsonology episodes all about bears. You should definitely listen to those as well. We offer more guidance about bear safety and just bear facts in general. But definitely read the directions or check out some videos on it before you go out in the wilderness, but you're going to want to spray a big cloud in the direction of the bear to set up kind of a capsicum force field. Now, if you, are in the swamps of New Guinea and you're charged by a flightless but lethal cassowary. I don't know, man. They don't care about pepper. So say a rosary. I do have a list of cassowary

experts and I need an episode on them because they can kill you with their feet. So, well, actually, I've got a cute little story like that. You know, the chili make the heat so that mammals won't eat it. But we had bags of our fruit down in the lab at the farm and the mice came in and ate them. So these little New Mexican mouths like chili heat. You know, I did an episode on urban rodentology about sewer rats in New York. Amazing guy, Dr. Bobby Corrigan. And he said that rats that grow up in lower Manhattan near Chinatown have a preference for Chinese food flavors. And same with in areas where there's more Indian food. Like they prefer because they grew up with it, which is hilarious to think of New Mexican mice being like, I can.

can handle it. And only a couple more questions. I know we've kept you here forever. I could talk about chili peppers all day. Thank God. Okay. I actually wanted to know a little bit about pop culture. And I know several people ask this, but it seems like in the last 10, 15 years that people care more about chili peppers than before. Have you, I feel like you've been a bit instrumental in that because of your advocacy in this. But yeah, how have you seen pop culture or general public consensus. What we find is that the younger generation likes hot and sweet. Okay. The older generation like my parents like tangy, vinegory, like sauerkraut. I actually worked on cabbage for sourcrow in Wisconsin for my Ph.D. And unfortunately, sourcrout consumption was just dying because

people didn't want the sour anymore. And so they kind of washed out some of that sourness, put in sweetness to see if that would work. But the Rubin sandwich kind of saved them. And so So Sourcout, but yeah, it's just a generational thing. Also, I think one of the things I brought about is new immigrants to the country, came from countries that had hot and spicy food, and they brought that with them. The Irish, the English are not known for their hot and spicy food. But the Vietnamese and Latin Americans are. So they brought that.

And then Americans travel a lot more than they used to. And so they've tasted these different foods. I think another thing is people feel willing and feel, safe to try these new things. And so they taste them and see what they're like. And as someone who studied sauerkraut and also is an absolute legend in the chili pepper world, how do you feel about kimchi? I keep a jar in my refrigerator all the time. You do? Whenever I eat Asian home, I have to have kimchi with it. Actually, I got in the habit when I visited Korea and they had the bowl of food there that always has the kimchi and I fell in love with it. And so now I have to have kimchi all the time with

Asian food. It's great for you, right? Yes, yes. It has lots of... Probiotics? Probiotics. Yes, yes. It's floated with probiotics, so it's good for you. What kind of chilies in that? In Korea, it's Korean chilies.

But here they use usually... Well, this is another story I can tell you. It's just keep going on. I love it. We wanted to export red chili powder to Asia. And they said, we didn't have good quality. And we didn't know what that meant. We tested the heat level.

We looked at the color levels. We didn't have dead rats, bugs. We thought they were putting up barriers. And then it turned out while we studied chili heat, that's where we learned that Asian chilies have a sharp heat, where New Mexico chilies have a flat heat, like it's being paint-brushed on where the sharp heat is like a prickly heat people say it prickles you. So we looked in there and we found out our variety called Sandia had that prickly heat. So we sent some over and they said, oh, you like this, yeah?

And now we actually send millions of pounds of chili to make kimchi and other products in Japan and Asia, Korea because they wanted that sharp heat. They just didn't know how to tell us until what I did is I came up was called a heat profile. And every chili has one and has five characteristics. And the first is how fast does the heat come on? Is it rapid or delayed? How long does it last? Does it dissipate quickly or does it linger?

Where do you sense it? Tip of your tongue, mid-palet, back of the throat. The other one is that sharp or flat heat. And then the last one is heat level. and that's measured by skullvilles. And so a jalapeno, come on quickly, dissipate fairly rapidly, be the tip of your tongue. Havanaeros are just the opposite. It's a delayed heat and lingers, and it's in the back of the throat.

And super hots are like in that habanero family. So that's the problem with super hots is people take a first bite. No, it's not very hot. They take a second bite, it kicks in, and then they're over the top. And then it lingers. I actually had some habaneros at a field day, and I had them out. out there, and one of the administrators came over and took it. I took a bite, turned bright red. I thought, oh, my God, he's going to drop dead. Bright red gets on the wagon and leaves. But then I saw the

administrator later, like two hours. And he goes, I'm still burning. I'm still burning. I said, yeah, it can linger for a lot, you know, because of his genetic makeup. It just lingered in him. So I said, stay away from the habaneros. Let's say you're watching someone doing a taste test. And they go, that's not bad. That's not bad. and everyone's waiting for it to kick in. That can be by variety of pepper. Exactly. And the person, the individual, too.

So you have to have these receptors to be able to taste those heat, different kinds of heats. What about hot ones? What about the hot ones effect? The show you mean? Yeah, the show. Do you love it?

You can cut this off because I've never watched it. I don't even know it. Oh, it's been great. I'm sorry. I hope it. What? Yeah. How have you never watched it?

Do you have a computer or a phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, you know, maybe I get enough of it at work, I guess. I don't know. I just never watched it. That is an answer I never could have anticipated. Yeah. That's amazing.

Do you feel like it's too much celebrity interview, not enough pepper talk? I think what it is is they're concentrating on heat. And I want the world to know there's more to chili peppers than just heat. Yes. So, you know, I mean, like I told somebody, you could go in your garage and hit your thumb with a hammer, and that's pain. But we don't do it. So why say, I'm going to give myself pain with chili peppers? It just doesn't make sense to me.

What about lip plumbers? Have you heard about lip plumbers? No. They make lip plumbers go to any cosmetics counter, and it plumps your lips up because it's super hot pepper. It's really tingly, and it irritates. your mouth so much that you get a lip plumping effect from it. Never heard of it. I'll send you some.

See what you think of it. Yeah, I need pumped lips. Just full, but I mean, it is kind of a fun tingle, but you're also like, ow, this hurts. That's amazing that you've never seen Hot Ones. I respect that. Okay. I like really do. First off, I just want to say, I love Hot Ones.

I think the show's host, Sean Evans, is a real one. Apparently, he does all of his own research, along with his own research, along with his brother on all the questions he asks, which are so thoughtful, well-researched. And if you ever find yourself opposite of Sean Evans promoting a Marvel franchise and just crying out of your nose, what can you do? Doug Pace, Fosgottis, Alex Alato, Daniel Carpenter, and less tolerant of spice than their wife, Ben Sparrow. We got you. Okay, you've flown too close to the sun. You're melting. What is it? Is it milk? Is it dish soap? What is it? No, we have actually done studies, and it turns out milk is the best product to cut the heat.

Okay. And it's not the fat. It's the casein protein. And so you can do no fat milk. And the next best is sugar. Okay. And then last is carbohydrate bread. So in New Mexico, we have two desserts usually.

One is flan, which is milk and sugar. And we have, um... Sopacea? Yeah, soap a pea is with honey. And so you get the bread and the sweet that way. And that cleanses the palate. What if you get it in your eyeball or elsewhere? All you can do, I have a story.

My daughter was young, and she was taking the seeds out of a chili peppers, to use them as coins with her dolls. And she got them in her eye. And of course, a dad, I'm calling the hospital, the emergency room. What do I do? And they said, all you got to do is just wash out the water and just, you know, calm her down, and your body will produce the endorphins and block it. And she'll be okay, and she was.

Does she remember it? Does she ever bring it up? No, but you know, it's interesting. She got used to eating chilies when she's here. She moved back east and her taste buds got sensitized again. So when she moves here, everything's too hot. Oh, my God. What about you?

How hot do you go? I don't go very hot. Medium is probably where I like it. I do have a lot of receptors. So I get the taste, you know, oh, that's a jalapeno in that sauce. Oh, that's habanero. Oh, that's New Mexico green chili. So I can sit and eat a dish and know what they put in it.

And your wife? Um, somewhat, even though being a native New Mexican, I, you know, she plays along with me, will be somewhere and she'll go, oh, I think that's the thing. And I'll go, I think you're right. Oh, that's so cute. The couple that sweats out peppers together. Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's right. What's the hardest part about your job? Oh, gosh, it's easier for telling me the best part was the students. I know, that's my next question. My best part was all the students seeing them, you know, mature, grow, learn, talking to people about chili, is it's been fun. The worst part, I think everybody will say this. It's more of your

administrators, the bureaucracy you have to deal with. You know, it just becomes a kind of overburden. And I used to joke to my, I should have gotten an MBA and an English degree because all I do is write grants and hustle money. I don't get to do the science. You know, my students did that got to do the science. That was a fun part. I'm just trying to hustle up a buck to pay for the things, you know, so that, you know, but I really had a wonderful career. I enjoyed it. If you had a favorite chili pepper. Do you have a favorite chili pepper or is that impossible? That's impossible because I tell people it's like your children. You don't have a favorite child. Well, parents, they do, don't there? They do. What if you, okay, top three. Top three favorite chili.

Well, I say for me, because I know the chili so well, it was. would be to say, well, what do you want to use it on? If I wanted to make a chili reino, I would probably use a Pupilano. If I wanted to, I actually used the chiltapines and put it in with apple jelly on turkey breasts. And then jalapenos for cornbread, the hajiz for savici. So there's all these chilies that I know and I use in different ways. And if people wanted to try some of your products that you have available, and support the Institute,

they can go to your website and order stuff, right? Exactly. You ready for that? We're ready. All right. I have students that are ready. And again, we'll link the Chili Pepper Institute gift shop in the show notes. And their pecan brittle, so good, just the right amount of heat.

I got some sauces. I'm too afraid to open. Maybe I will for the secret of the end. Now that I've said that, I feel like I'd have to. I don't know if you want to hear it. I'll cut it if it's bad. I also highly recommend the raspberry pepper jams from the Albuquerque-based Heidi's Jam Factory, including there's one with ginger in it and a little hot pepper.

I've given away a few jars that I'm not hoarding. Everyone from Jarrett's 80-year-old grandma to Todd, our chef friend, became instantly obsessed with the stuff. So that was Heidi's Jam Factory.com. What a discovery. But yeah, the Chili Pepper Institute, their whole gift shop, one-stop shopping. I have a box of jam I'm going home with. Then I'm like, you're going to have to order some more of this.

So ask brilliant people your burning questions. And thank you again to Dr. Paul Bosland, as well as Susan and Bella in the gift shop, not our Susan, their Susan, for all of their time and information and making my heart so warm for Chili's. I have to give it up to Susan. She was like, oh, if you like this, you might like this. I ended up getting so much more stuff than I thought that I would want, and I have loved all of it, except for me. one thing, which I have not yet tried, and that is the Ashes to Ashes. Give me a minute. Okay, but first, you can find the Institute linked in the show notes, as well as their gift shop, and also Heidi's Jam Factory, if you want to go straight to the source there, if you're ordering a bunch. We are at Ologies

on Instagram of Blue Sky, and I'm at Allie Ward, just one L and Allie on both. Smollogies are kid-friendly classroom-safe versions of Ologies available in their own feed, wherever you get podcasts. We have ologies merch available at ologiesmerch.com. And you can join our Patreon for as little as a dollar a month via patreon.com slash ologies to submit your questions. Possibly have them read by my hot mouth. Aaron Talbert admins theology's podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Calliard Dwyer does the website. Scheduling producer, Noel Delworth, lines up these visits. Top Banana Pepper is managing director Susan Hale and the Pith that keeps us going so strong. our editor is Jake Chafee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio.

Nick Thorburn plays through the theme music. And if you stick around to the end, you know, I tell you a secret. This week, it's that, yes, I will try the ashes to ashes hot sauce. I haven't tried it yet. I honestly don't want to, but I do feel like you deserve to know. And also one thing that really gets my goat is when people try something hot on camera or on mic, and they're like, oh my God, I'm dying right now, literally dying. and they have to play it up. I'm not going to do that, okay? I'm going to try this,

and I'm going to be completely honest, all right? I'm going to go to the kitchen. I have one tortilla chip with a couple of dabs of ashes to ashes waiting. I also have a big iced glass of almond milk with some protein shake on top. I'm not a milk person, so we're going to go the vegan route. Again, the only dairy I have in the house right now is like two servings of whipped cream in a canister. that I might resort to. I also have a mango popsicle on hand. Here we go. One tortilla chip, two dabs, ashes to ashes.

It has a fruity nose. The first flavors are fruity, kind of like cantaloupe. It hurts. Oh, I feel it in the tongue, and I just, like, swallowed the first bite down the hatch. That does feel like burning gasoline. Bees. It tastes like bees on my mouth or wasps more accurately. I don't like it, but I'm alive. My throat does feel like it's closing a little bit. I don't have asthma. I'm going to take a sip of, wow. It gets a little worse. Okay, I'm going to take a sip of, oh my gosh, wow. It gets a little worse. Okay. I'm going to take, um, oh my gosh. I would say it's about a third of like what a migraine is.

I can feel my face flushing a lot and my heart is going up. It does just keep getting worse. I'm drinking almond milk and a remedy vegan protein shake, chocolate flavor, love. That's helping a little bit, but only for the second that it's on your tongue. But it is helping. I think the protein in the protein shake is helpful. Nose. Fawcett. Ow. This does get worse. Fuck.

Unpleasant. It's a sharp, small pain. If that makes sense. It feels like a bunch of needles. Huh. This sucks. I'm going to try the whipped cream. Whip cream not helping. I know that they say water only. spreads the oils around, but the ice is numbing my tongue a little. At this point, we know it's hot as fuck.

I think it's the hottest thing I've ever eaten. It definitely feels like punishment. Like once I took too much Vivance and it feels like that, but also glass. I'm going for Paul's trick about the sweet, how the sweet helps. So I think the ice pop is definitely MVP. If you can get yourself an ice pop on the tongue that's sweet, I think that's your best bet. I think it's hit my stomach because that is starting to burn. It's starting to go away, though. I feel like I can only speak in stanzas because I can only collect my thoughts like a sentence at a time,

but also I'm trying not to slurp on Mike, which is disgusting. I'm sorry. Okay, well, this sucks, but I'm alive. I'm going to be fine. Like 15 minutes from now, I'm going to be fine and I'm proud of myself. Brough, I had to hot back on here. It is like seven or eight minutes later and my stomach hurts like I got kicked in it. Like someone kicked me. It fucking hurts. Like, imagine if someone punched you in the stomach.

My mouth still burns, but God willing, nobody barfs. Okay, just letting you know, I'm not out of the woods. I'm just going to say bye for real. Whatever happens to me is between me and Grammy. Bye bye. You're hot, you're hot.