Stuff You Should Know - How Chili Peppers Work

Episode Date: September 10, 2015

Born and raised in South America, chilis were the earliest crop domesticated in the continent and among the first items brought back to Europe by Columbus. Today people are really, really into them. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and Jerry.

And that makes this Stuff You Should Know. I was so gonna quote the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the band. They apparently used them at Guantanamo Bay to torture prisoners. Really? Yeah. That surprises me. I know.

Usually it's like, I've heard of stories like that, but usually it's some kind of dark metal or something like super- Starland vocal band? Some might say abrasive. Some might think it's very soothing to hear death metal. Supposedly there's a study out there that had a ridiculously small study population

that found that it's calming, it has a calming influence, metal music does. Paid for by the Metal Association of North America. Right, the Scandinavia. Yeah, I'm kinda surprised they played the Chili Peppers. It's pretty easy on the ears, isn't it? Oh, well, one of the songs with California Cation. The other later stuff isn't as good.

I could go a little crazy with that one. I'll talk. What were you gonna quote? I was gonna say, give it away, give it away now or something like that. Oh yeah. Or fight like a brave. I haven't heard that one.

That's early stuff. You could just say like under the bridge downtown. Yeah. I ate a Chili Pepper. I actually read his biography. I guess it was an autobiography, Anthony Ketus, because I was- Was he writing by himself?

Yeah, I was just going through a kick where I was reading music autobiographies for just rock star stories. Didn't you recommend the Miley Crew biography? There's the best. Which one was it? There's one quintessential one. I can't remember what it's called.

The quintessential crew. Yeah, just look. I mean, that's not an autobiography. That's just a biography. Yeah. But that one's really good. The slash one is good. And the Ketus one is good.

Man, that guy, he had troubles. Oh yeah? Just bad drug troubles. And woman troubles over and over and over. Huh. But he's good now. Well, good for him. Yeah.

Welcome back to the fray, Anthony Ketus. That's what I say. So we're not talking about the red hot Chili Peppers. We're talking about red hot Chili Peppers. Right, not the. Right. We're talking about Chili Peppers. Depending on where you are in the world,

CHILI Peppers, or CHILI Peppers. Or just Chili's. Yeah, you could say that. I think a lot of chefs just call them Chili's. Well, yeah. Cause they're like, they don't waste words. No. They don't say peppers.

It's a couple of extra syllables. Yeah, exactly. No chef. Give me some of those Chili's. It is the bell pepper and the celery stalk. And the onion is part of the trinity of, I guess you would call it, Nolan's cooking. Sure.

And the bell pepper is a chili pepper. It's just a non-hot chili pepper, but it's still the same thing. Yeah. And it turns out that we get that terminology, Chili, it actually was used by the Aztecs or the Triple Alliance in Mesoamerica. The Triple Lindies?

The Triple Alliance. Prior to the arrival of Columbus. And it was Columbus himself where we get the misnomer Chili Pepper. Cause Columbus. He's a big dummy. Could that guy get anything right? No.

So he comes across the chili pepper and decides that it must be a relative of the black pepper with which he and the rest of Europe are already very familiar. Sure. So he calls it the chili pepper because he hears up in Mexico, they call it Chili's. It's what the Triple Alliance calls it.

So that's where it came from, chili peppers, but it has no relation whatsoever to the chili or the pepper, the black pepper. Yes. And it's been around, it's actually one of the oldest domesticated crops in the Americas actually. Yeah.

It started out in South America about 6,000 years ago. I saw 9,000. Let's say between five and 12. Okay. And they don't know whether it was Bolivia or Brazil. There's a heated debate in the pepper community on the country of origin,

but they do know that birds are the ones who disperse them and birds can't feel heat in their mouth. So they carry them around and propagate the seeds. And then Columbus, of course, brought them to Europe and that's how things spread. That's why you can use hot sauce or chili pepper spray or something like that

on your bird seed to deter squirrels. Yeah. Because the birds are fine. Yeah, but the squirrels. So squirrels just run around going hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. And it says here, the birds can't digest pepper seeds, but nobody can really digest pepper seeds if they're whole.

I totally can. No, you can't. I will show you right now. You're gonna show me your stool? No, we can't digest them either because we don't digest seeds that aren't chewed because they're covered in cellulose and it just goes straight through to our poop.

Exactly, same as corn. Yeah, because that is a seed. It is. I'm glad you finally said that. Somebody needed to say it. I think that's one of the trendy facts, don't you think? Was it corn as a seed? Yeah.

Yeah, probably. Seems like I saw that all over the internet. It's pretty hot right now. Corn and poop. It's a hot topic. So I did a dumpy dump on that. On hot topics? Man.

No, corn. Corn and your poop. Yep, yeah. See, hot topic. So Columbus brings this stuff back and it spreads like crazy. Like syphilis. Yeah, because think about this.

Chili peppers are native to the Americas and we're unknown outside of the Americas until about 500 or so years ago. Now they're grown in just about every country in the world. There's all different types of varieties. But it turns out that there's 25 wild species and five domesticated species. And one of the noteworthy things about chili peppers

is most of the time when humans domesticated a wild crop, they would stop using the wild version of it because it was just so far inferior to the domesticated version. Not so with chilies. Wild chilies are just as prized, if not more prized than the domesticated ones. They're delicious.

So there's five species, Chuck. And by the way, chili peppers belong to the nightshade family. With potatoes, tomatoes, goji berries, eggplants, and nightshade. And the five species are fun to say. Yeah, I wasn't even gonna do it, but I encourage you to. Okay.

Capsicum annuum. Capsicum chinesae. Chinesae. Capsicum frutescens. Capsicum bacatum. And Capsicum pubescence. Does have little hairs on them. Yeah, saw that one coming.

So those are the five families. Peppers are generally hot, although we'll get into all that with the varieties. Like you said, the bells, everyone knows bells aren't very hot. But what you're talking about with the heat is what's called their pungency. And the heat actually comes from alkaloids present

in the peppers called capsaicin. Yes. Which we talked about in December of 2011. With pepper spray? With pepper spray episode. Because that's what they're using in pepper spray. If you didn't listen to it, go check it out. That's a good one.

But yeah, it's kind of funny to think about. Defense, self-defense tool is really just canned hot pepper. Yeah, because that stuff can be. It works. Yeah, it really does work. And with the pungency of a pepper, most people think that it's found in the seeds. That's actually a myth.

Well, it is found in the seeds. It's not housed in the seeds. Right, so the seeds are attached to the pepper itself through something called the placenta. It's a membrane, that white stuff that's inside of a pepper, right? And that's where the capsaicin is stored. And since the seeds are attached to the membrane,

a lot of that stuff makes it way to the seeds. But if you really want the high heat, you eat the membrane. If you want the high heat, just eat the whole thing. I'd de-seed and de-membrane mine. But if you're looking for heat, then just don't even sweat it. Literally, don't sweat it. Yeah, that's like the second,

at least pun that you've made. Oh yeah? Yeah. What was the first one? Something was. They were both accidental. Hot, I can't remember what it was. Oh, well, those are just words.

No, it was perfect. It was really great. So the pain is actually not coming from your taste buds because they don't feel pain. It's coming from pain receptors in your mouth. And it sends a message to your brain saying, this is super hot. I wouldn't eat that much unless you like it.

Right, it's the same pain receptors that tell you that, say, the sip of coffee you just took is too hot. Or something is thermally too hot. It's triggered by capsaicin. It's the TRPV1 receptor. And that triggers the release of a neurotransmitter called substance P. And that's.

Which capsaicin can also block. What's crazy is yes. So the, it's, we'll talk about it a little more later, but capsaicin is used as a topical pain reliever, right? Like Shaquille O'Neal knows that. I see, I think it's like icy hot. Yeah. Oh, really?

So capsaicin, if you rub it on the skin, it goes to those TRPV1 receptors and basically overloads them so thoroughly that they're no longer able to transmit the sensation of pain in that area. So it's a local anesthetic. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it is.

And lots of other health benefits that we'll talk about. Peppers are great for you. Peppers are super. They do not cause ulcers. That is a myth. And in fact, they protect the stomach lining or can. And they can also thin the blood. So you need to watch out for that

if you are on an anticoagulant. Yeah. I don't know if they say that on the prescription or not, but. The pepper prescription? No. I prescribed you to an alopecia today. No, the anticoagulant prescription, of course. It might.

But if you are in a contest or just at dinner and your mouth becomes inflamed, don't, well, you can drink water. I think it provides a temporary respite. I don't know if it even does that. It does for me. It basically moves the stuff around and throughout your mouth. Yeah.

Which is not good. What you want is something fatty. Yeah. Like milk. Yeah, because capsaicin dissolves in the presence of fats. Or like if you eat a lot of Mexican food or Indian food, that sour cream and that yogurt is a nice way to smooth that out.

That's what it's there for, baby. Well, that and taste and flavor and texture and everything else. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. It's not like they're like, you just add some sour cream because this is too hot. Right.

But it definitely helps. I read an article actually with a guy who was in a contest and he was a hot pepper guy and he described, I think he ate like three ghost peppers just in 20 seconds. And he was fine at first. Then it got hot, like not in his mouth, but in his throat. And then he just kept going through waves. Like he said, it would go away and I thought I was good.

Then he was like an hour later, it felt like a red hot burning nickel on my sternum. And it was just moving its way down, I guess. Man. And then he said he felt jubilation, like exhilaration, which we'll talk about this one of the effects of peppers that can pick up your mood. But he said he was just like, felt like he was on cocaine.

We're weird. Yeah, because they trigger a release of endorphins. Exactly. So you can get a runner's hire, some sort of high off of eating peppers, which is why some people eat peppers. They really make them feel great. Yeah, I guess this guy wasn't a runner.

He must have just done some cocaine before it in life. That was his go-to. And so you said that birds are immune to the effects of peppers and they also spread the seed by pooping it out, right? Yeah. Mammals are not immune to the effects of it, including humans. And apparently humans are the only mammals

that purposefully eat peppers. And it's been called a form of benign masochism. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. But it makes sense if, and the reason why they think peppers have that kind of burning thing is to protect itself, to ward off mammals from eating it.

Sure. But the idea that we can get some sort of rush from it is kind of counterintuitive, if you think about it, as far as evolution goes from the pepper standpoint. Sure, yeah. Because that encourages people to keep eating you. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, well, let's take a break here

and we'll come back and talk a little bit about how the heat is measured in a hot pepper. Stop. Yes, yes, yes, no. Stop, stop, stop, yes, yes, no, no. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

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Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

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Wilbur Scoville. Mr. Scoville. Doc, was he a doctor? He was a pharmacist. Yeah, but I wondered if he was a doctor. I think he got an honorary doctorate. He deserved one. Do you count those?

Sure, all right. Probably depends on where it's from, what it's for, but sure. Yeah, I would. Oh, of course you would. If I got one, I'd be like, you can call me Dr. Mr. Clark. Dr. Mr. He was a pharmacist, like you said,

who developed something called the Scoville organoleptic test in 1912. And what? Is this a hilarious name for what it is? It is kind of weird, isn't it? You should just call it the chili test or something. It just made me laugh like a goon. Well, previous to this test, the only test

was basically just to have people eat them and ask them how hot they thought it was. Is that hot? Yeah, but it's pretty hot. OK, that's a pretty hot pepper. Give me some milk fat. All right, technically pork fat, whatever. You just need a slab of fat and then get rid of it real quick.

Yeah, they said chocolate, too, will help. You know, it's a fatty, full of lipids. I think that's people just like to eat chocolate with their hot stuff. So Scoville says, there's got to be a better way. And he says, why don't we devise a test where we have people eat peppers and ask them how hot it is? Pretty much.

But let's do it in a little bit different way. Let's keep feeding them peppers that are more diluted until they can't feel heat any longer and just make it a little more organized and formal. So the Scoville heat unit is what it comes up with, right? So for example, a bell pepper has a zero. Not hot. But say some types of habanero peppers

can get up to like 500,000. I think the red something, oh, what is it? I'm sorry, the red savinia habanero pepper got up to 570,000 Scoville heat units. It's very hot. And what that means is that it would take 570,000 cups of water to dilute one cup of extract from the red savinia habanero.

And one shot of milk fat. Right. Before anybody could say, I detect no heat whatsoever. Yeah, that's a lot of water. Yeah, it's a tremendous amount of water. And it's not like he was pouring a whole cup of this stuff into 570,000 cups of water. It's math.

I think he just used fractions. Yeah, probably so. Yeah, it's a great minute to come to that conclusion. I was like, what kind of bat did this guy have in his yard? A big one. So that was the old test. And even though they no longer use that, they still use that SHU Scoville heat unit

as the unit of measure, which I think is a nice little tip of the cap. It is. Because it could have changed it. Wilbert Scoville's ghost is like, I approve. Now what they do is use liquid chromatography. And they've been doing that since about the 70s. And that's not specific to testing peppers.

It's basically just separating and analyzing compounds of any mixture. Right, but you can target the specific type of compound. And in this case, you're looking for the alkaloid capsaicin. Yes. And you determine how many parts per million is present in a given pepper. And it takes the subjectivity out.

Yeah, and it's literally just measuring the capsaicin level in any pepper. But what's neat is they figured out, Scoville is clearly on to something. Because they figured out that if you take this high-performance liquid chromatography measurement and multiply the number it spits out by 16, you will come to the Scoville unit.

So he was off by 16? Yeah, by a factor of 16. Not bad. But that's neat that it's not like 16.9, 8, 7, or something like that or multiply it by the fact that you can multiply it by a standard number and come to the Scoville heat unit each time. It means he was doing something right.

There's something there. Scoville, where'd it go? That sounds like one of the real men of genius commercials or something. I guess, well, should we get to some of the types of peppers now? Are we there? Yeah?

Yeah, I think so. Because if you're a scientist, there's two ways to classify a pepper. By its heat, using the Scoville heat unit index, and by its shape, yes, and then color. Well, apparently, scientists don't classify them by color. I'm talking about you and me, buddy. Hotheads.

We're in the kitchen. OK. And we're looking at peppers. And we're like, look at that red one. Look at that green wrinkly one. That one's shaped funny. That's a funny shape. That's how we classify it.

Red, funny-shaped one. It's really hot. Wrinkly or smooth, there's another thing. You might notice. But you're right. As far as science is concerned, it's heat and shape. And then the shapes go from shape A to shape I. Right.

And my favorite descriptor is the lantern shape. I think that's great. Yeah, that's the habanero. Yeah. Very thin skinned and very hot. Yeah, can you eat peppers? I didn't even ask this. I eat a lot of peppers.

My heat tolerance isn't great. I do like the heat, but I'm a bit of a wimp. So what kind of pepper do you normally? Can you eat a scotch bonnet? Well, I cook a lot with just bells, of course. That doesn't count. Sure they do. OK.

Because they're peppers. All right. So I cook a lot with those. But I cook a lot with poblanos, anaheim, chipotle, jalapenos, serranoes. And a chipotle is a chipotle. You just threw me off. It's chipotle.

Chipotle. Chipotle is a smoked habanero. Right. Yeah. And ancho is a dried serrano. Ancho is dried poblano. That's right. Ancho powder.

Yeah. That's from Pueblo, Mexico. Right. Poblanos are great if you want to make a good chillerino. Oh, yeah. Because they're about the right size, and they're really just hearty, thick, waxy. They hold up well.

Yeah, you mean are aficionados of those things? Of the poblano? No, of the chillerino. Oh, yeah. Find a good one of those. Yeah, you know it's funny. In college, I worked at Mexicali Grill, which I don't think is even a thing anymore.

Oh, really? I know the one in Atlanta Highway Clothes, which was very sad. I'm very surprised. It was an institution. Sure. And their chillerino, like a lot of the, when you go to some, kind of the cheaper Mexican places that have the menu

with 80 combination dinners, a lot of times, you'll find a chillerino, which is a ball of beef wrapped in cheese sitting on top of a one inch square green bell pepper. I've not seen that one. Yeah, that was what our chillerino was. It was basically just meat and cheese. Man, no. But you want the real thing, which is stuffed in a real pepper.

And a lot of people use breading? Unnecessary. I can have it both ways. Well, it's supposed to have some sort of fried wrapper around it. And the breading is usually too much. The better way to do it is like a thin omelet, almost like a crepe around it.

Everyone's going to run into that because they're so good. Yeah. Good stuff. All right, well, let's back up then. OK. Back to the bells, which you don't consider pepper separately. Well, I mean, as far as you're talking heat is concerned.

Yeah, no heat. But they're great to grill and. And I can't say anything. I can't really go beyond a jalapeno. Oh, you can't stand the heat. No. So I'm frequently getting out of the kitchen. But I actually made a New Year's resolution to eat more hot

stuff, because I realized I'm such a total wuss when it comes to this. Yeah, I think you can build up a tolerance for sure. And I have. I've gotten much better at eating spicy stuff. But yeah, if I, a habanero is way too hot for me. It depends on what kind of spice it is, too. A lot of times, I'm more tolerant of some than others.

But I've learned that once you get past that very unpleasant, painful sensation, there's a whole new world of tastes out there. Yeah, good point. So the bells are the little squatty dudes. They can be, I don't know if a lot of people know this, all the different colors of the bell pepper is the same pepper.

The red bell, the green bell, the yellow bell, the orange bell, it's all the same. But they taste differently. Yes, because it's how long they're ripened. So the green one is ripened or harvested first. Wait a minute, wait a minute. It's all the same pepper. Wait a minute, hold on.

That's why you'll get a red pepper that still has a little green buddy, like a little patch of green. Oh, wait a minute. Hold on. So you didn't know this? No. Wow, all right, well, that didn't happen much.

For real? Yeah. Well, that's great, man. Thank you for teaching us that. The green peppers is picked first. That's why they're less expensive, too. And they are a little bitter and they are not nearly as sweet.

Then you have yellow, then orange, then red, as they ripen. And that's why the red is most expensive. And it's because it's the most mature. It's delicious. It is delicious. And they are sweet and kind of fruity. Have you ever smoked one?

We're not smoked ones. Roasted? Yes. Oh, I do it all the time. And then you just peel the skin off? Yeah, what I do, this article says to do it in the oven. I either put it on the grill, I do it with fire. Yeah, fire works real well.

Or just on the stove, I'll just put it on the pan. You got a gas stove? Got a gas stove. Sure. That's a convection. You just put like an old piece of paper on it. Roast your pepper over that. Yeah, I'll just throw the red pepper on the fire

until it's all black. And then I throw it in a paper bag. I don't do paper because I don't usually have paper bags. Yeah, I'll just put it in like a grocery store bag. That seems carcinogenic. No, I don't think so. You should. Well, we'll find out.

Yeah, check back with me in 20 years. Well, because then you run into the sink and wash all that char off of it. So I don't think it's coming to contact what you're eating with the plastic. Right, so you use the sink, huh? Yeah, just because it's really hot to the touch still. Oh, well, that's the other thing

that I noticed in this article. It says leave it for like 15 minutes. Which seems smart. I don't ever have time for that. Gotcha. So I just put it under the cold water, get all the seeds in the membrane and the skin off. Got you.

And then slice it up and throw it in the salad. It is delicious, man. Very delicious. But the, okay, the red pepper has more because it's matured longer. Right. Has 11 times more beta carotene than green and one and a half times more vitamin C.

So they're healthier. That's what you're paying for, the beta carotene. That's right. Big money in beta carotene. Right. And then you can also have chocolate, purple and even white bell peppers. And this is, now you're just lying.

Now I think those are just different varieties though. I don't think those are like how mature they are. Like the white ones are grown in the dark or something like that? I don't know. I have no idea. The pimento and paprika are both where you, they come from red bells though.

Gotcha. And paprika is. Well then how is that, how does that have any kind of, paprika has a little bit of heat to it, doesn't it? No. No, I'm thinking of cayenne pepper. Yeah, cayenne is made from hot red chilies. Yeah.

And paprika is just smoked unless it's Hungarian paprika and that's sweeter and that's not smoked. Gotcha. So if you see a recipe that says paprika, you should probably know whether it's smoked or Hungarian. Yeah. And if not, I would probably just go with Hungarian.

Oh, you think? Well, unless you just know you want a smoky flavor. Gotcha. This has been quite a rollercoaster. Banana peppers, very mild. Pepperoncinis, very mild. Yeah. You get those on your Subway sandwich?

Yeah, yeah. Or like as a side on a Papa John's pizza? Oh yeah. Something like that. That's right, I knew I'd seen those. And then of course the best one of all, the poblano pepper. Right.

And then the pimento, which we just mentioned, and that is a variety of the red bell, I think, and that's what they put in olives. Yeah. And cheese. Right. What about the hot guys? See, I don't mess with them that much,

but yeah, like we said, there's jalapeno, serrano, habanero, chipotle. So it is chipotle. Yeah, what do you think it was? We were saying chipotle. Or were you saying chipotle? I was saying chipotle, I've always said that. And then anaheim.

Anaheim. Yeah, I think some people transpose the L and say chipotle. Yeah, they definitely do. I got confused. I know how to say it right, but earlier I was like, wait, they didn't sound right. Yeah. And then of course you have the delicious Thai chilies

or bird's eye chilies. And those are really good and super hot. And they are small and thin, but pack a punch. So normally the rule of thumb is thin, long ones that are red are gonna be your hottest. Yeah. Right? But there's exceptions to those rules.

Which is the Scotch bonnet? Scotch bonnet is like a, it's like even, it's like more pumpkin shaped. It's like habanero, but it's even, it's less lantern shaped and more pumpkin shaped. And I think it's like a yellow, yellow, orange and very hot, very frequently found like Jamaican cuisine, the Scotch bonnet.

Gotcha. If you dry the pepper out and you have like the oncho pepper, the chipotle dried stuff that we're talking about, it's gonna be hotter. So keep that in mind. Some people who like peppers will just put them in a food dehydrator

and eat them like that. Yeah. Yeah. Horde just let them just dry out and you're in the sun. Sure. If you're slack. If you're hippy. Chuck, we also said that, so if you're a scientist,

you say this pepper is shape A and has a Scoville rating of five trillion, right? Okay. Then you've just described a pepper to another scientist. They know what you're talking about. Sure. But there's something called the Chili Pepper Institute. It's an institute that's associated

with the University of New Mexico. And New Mexico, by the way, is the foremost domestic producer of chili peppers in the United States. Correct. Thanks to a man named Fabian Garcia. Correct. He was a pioneer in cultivating peppers

here in the United States. Yeah. And in 1921, he released his first variety, the New Mexico number nine. I thought you were gonna say his first album. Mambo number five. Yeah. But he's like known as the father of chili peppers

in the US. Yeah, the North American chili. And in India, they are, they're the world's largest producer of chilies. Oh yeah, by far. Yeah. But so there's another way to describe them beyond shape, color, and heat.

And the Chili Pepper Institute came up with this. It's for the heat profile. And basically there's five components to the heat profile. There's the heat, the Scoville heat unit to it. Yeah. Then there's how fast it hits. Yeah, that's a big one. Like you were saying that guy who ate some ghost chilies,

that they were kinda, like it took a minute to come on. He's like, this isn't so bad. There's some peppers that hit like immediately. Yeah. That would be the second descriptor, the second component. The third would be whether it lingers or dissipates quickly.

Sure. Or how fast it dissipates. Eventually it's going to dissipate, you hope. Yeah, and then come and burn the next day coming out the other end. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

And then the fourth one is where it's sensed. Like is it in the throat? Is it on your tongue? Is it in the roof of your mouth? Yeah. Where does it attack, basically? And then the last one is whether it's flat or sharp. So flat is say, I saw it in I think that New Yorker article.

Or maybe the Smithsonian one that I sent you. Flat is where it's like your whole tongue is just coated in the sensation of heat. Yeah. Whereas sharp is where it feels like little hot needles in your mouth or something like that. And the preference in America is for a flat sensation.

Sure. Whereas Asian countries tend to prefer the sharp sensation. Oh, like the Thai chilies? Yes. Interesting. Sharp. That's right.

Do you like hot Asian food? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I like curries and stuff like that. Nothing too hot though. Yeah. I mean like I'm still a pretty big wuss. No, I'm the same way.

Um, and I'm also like comfortable enough with myself that I don't feel the need to show off. No. Or accept a dare. No, of course not. No. So yeah, I don't need that hot of stuff. But I will sometimes.

Yeah, if you're still accepting food-related dares in your late 30s or 40s, then you, I don't know, you should seek some help. Did you read about that guy, Ted Busser or Busser? Oh, he was in the New Yorker article. That's exactly what he does. How old is he? He's, you know, 30s, 40s.

He's on YouTube. Seek some help, Ted. And he accepts challenges, food challenges. So people send him like the most disgusting thing they can find and then he eats it on air. But one of the things that he eats are like really hot peppers and has become kind of like a defacto pepper judge. Right.

Because there is this whole community out there. Oh yeah. We'll talk about that after we take a break. How about that? All right. If you know, stop, stop, you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise

or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

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And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen

so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, Chuck, we kind of teased it. There's a, there's a community of chili pepper fishing autos out there. Big tough guys.

And women. Yes. And yeah, I meant that in the non-gender specific. Yeah. And they range from just people who like to eat them to people who make their own hot sauce. To people who are competing by growing. Cultivators.

Yeah, the hottest peppers on the planet. Yeah. And they, it gets pretty dicey. They get very competitive and very snippy from what I read. Yeah, there's. About, you know, the legitimacy of the heat that they claim. Yeah. So there's, again, a really great New Yorker article

called The Fire Eaters from, I think, a year or two back. Yeah. And it gives a really great outsider's view of this community. And it is very snippy. Yeah. One of the problems is, is there is no official central body that says, this is the hottest pepper on the planet. Well, Guinness does.

Guinness doesn't, a lot of people defer to Guinness, but some other people are like, Guinness doesn't know. Yeah, they don't know food. They're dilatants. What we need is a governing body that's dedicated only to chili peppers. Not, not Guinness, right? Yeah, and one reason why is because it changes.

Like people are cultivating these things. There could be a new hot, hottest pepper every three months. Exactly. And Guinness isn't going to stay on top of that. Right. So there it's kind of like, why are you being talking to those guys? So some people do defer to Guinness

because it is the closest thing that they have to a judgment saying this is the world's hottest pepper. And people just like saying that. But there's no organizing central body that is dedicated to judging, which is the hottest chili pepper. And there should be. According to these people, they could use it big time. They think the government should supply it.

But they can't even decide on whether that the hottest pepper in the world should be its peak or what it averages. It's mean. Yeah. So right now, Guinness goes by the mean. And as it stands, in the world, the hottest chili pepper as of August 2013 is called the Carolina Reaper. Yeah, the HP 22B in H7 out of Rockkill, South Carolina.

Yep. And the Carolina Reaper has an average. An average. Remember that Red Sevinia Habanero had 570,000 Scoville heat units? Yes. This one averages 1,569,300 Scoville heat units. That's right.

And a peak of over 2.2 million. Yeah. And hats off to Ed Curry of Pucker Butt Pepper Company and Fort Mill. He's a very controversial pepper grower. He is. He blended the original crossbreed was between a ghost pepper, which

was the previous hottest pepper introduced to the North American 2000, the infamous ghost pepper. And then he crossbreed that with or bred that with a Red Habanero. So the Bhut Jalokia is the ghost pepper. It's from India. And from 2007 to 2013, it was the reigning champ. Yes.

And from before that was that Red Sevinia from 1994 to 2007. Again, that's as far as Guinness is concerned. But there are peppers out there. There's the, what's the Scorpion one? The Trinidad Scorpion Butch Tea. Yeah. So that was actually grown by some guys in Australia who crossed a Trinidad Scorpion, which is already very hot,

with a pepper that was grown by a guy named Butch Taylor in, I think, Mississippi. He's right outside of Baton Rouge. Big on this as it turns out. Yeah, big time. I think the thing is, if there's people who listen to Front 242 and go boar hunting, if there's a larger population of them in that country, that country's going

to be more likely to be into eating hot peppers. What's Front 242? They're like an industrial band. Oh, really? Yeah. What does that mean about me? Because I've never even heard of it. You don't eat hot peppers.

Oh, OK. There are some who claim, in fact, growing Southern California says, I've had a pepper once that was over 3 million. But I don't even publish that stuff. He says, because it's a fluke. Right. So that's the question.

Should that one be considered the world's hottest pepper? Or should that plant have to, or that species, consistently have to put out something at 3 million? Yeah. Or does it matter? Well, it's another question entirely. You know, can't we just, I know they get specific about it and they want their due.

But it seems like we can just say all of these are very, very hot. You're welcome. Yeah. It's scary stuff if you ask me. It is. Christopher Guest should do a mockumentary about pepper hotheads.

It's ripe for it. All right. So let's say you want to pick out a pepper at a grocery store. Look for firm skin. Look for super bright colors, which I don't know. I'm pretty down on produce and big box grocery stores. But if you go to a farmer's market, and especially like a local farmer's market,

you're going to see weird, shaped, super, super bright colored peppers. Yeah, weird shaped is right. Remember? Yeah. We've talked about this before. Grocery stores won't sell ones that are perfectly awesome and maybe even better tasting because they look weird.

Right. That bell pepper looks like Richard Nixon. Throw it in the trash. Yeah, and it's like, I'm not a crook. The longer they ripen, the hotter they get. So like you said, the red ones, if the red ones still have a little green, they're not fully ripe yet. So they probably won't be as hot.

But that's the case with the bell probably anyway. So you're not looking for heat. Right. You're looking for sweet. If you are cooking with peppers, it says in here, be sure to wash your hands. Yeah. But what you really need to do if you're serious

is wear gloves. Wear doctors, what are they called? Rubber gloves. Yeah, rubber gloves. Because that is truly the only way. If you come into contact with your fingers and that membrane or those seeds, you can wash your hands 10 times. And you forget.

And the next day, you will get an eye booger out. Oh, yeah. And you'll be like, what in the world? My eyes on fire. Or you take your contacts out and you go to put them in the next one. Oh, I can't imagine. I cooked one night some paella and used some hot peppers

and did not wear gloves. And I went pee-pee later. Oh, no. I didn't think about it. And I had a, speaking of syphilis, burning sensation down below. It was bad. That's how they simulate it for medical students.

Oh, really? It was bad. So I learned the hard way. I just got a box of those night, is it nitrate gloves? Nitrate or nitrite. And I put them. One explodes, the other one's fine, I think. Well, I put them in the kitchen.

I also wear a painter's respirator when I'm. What kind of peppers are you working with? You know, the hot stuff. Like ghost peppers? No. But I cook with habaneros and stuff sometimes. And it's like, it's nuclear. The fumes are.

It's like, if you're over the sink clean in a mountain, you're breathing it in. You'll find yourself, or at least I do, coughing and burning. So I'll wear the respirator in my gloves. So you mean I would juice sometimes? Oh, yeah. And every once in a while, she'd put like a pepper in there, like a jalapeno.

And it would just turn the kitchen into like a tear gas bomb had gone off. It's crazy. It gets everywhere. It does. Because these things are basically vaporized, and they just spread so easily through the air. And they're a season.

Juicing a pepper. It definitely gives it a kick. Oh, if you want to store peppers, like we said, you can dry them out and they'll keep for a long time. But you don't want to wash them. You want to just put them unwashed into your fridge. Yeah, true. And they'll just keep just regular peppers

will keep for a long time. It's not something that goes bad very quickly. But you can freeze them. If you slice them, put them on a baking tray in the freezer, then you can collect them and just throw them in a bag, and you can keep them for like a year. But I don't see why you freeze peppers. Just buy them out you need and cook with them.

Or pickle them. That's great. Pickled peppers are wonderful. I can just eat those straight. I don't like pickled things, so I'm not into it. Yeah, I know. It's so good for you. Pickling?

Pickled foods are so good for you. They have so many health benefits. I'll eat other healthy things that I enjoy. But how do you not like pickle stuff? Like, I could eat pickled. You could cut your finger off and pickle it. I'd probably eat it. How does anyone not like anything?

But I mean, what about it? You don't like the tartness? No, just the taste. Anything pickled, like a pickled pickle. Sauerkraut? Ugh. You don't like sauerkraut? I hate sauerkraut.

I guess I could have seen that coming. I hate pickles so much that I have to ask and rest, like, when I go to a pub and have a burger and fries to leave the pickle off. Because invariably, they will put the pickle down, soaking into the french fries in the bun. And it will ruin that for me. Wow, you hate pickles that much?

I hate pickles that much. Well, I'll eat the pickles that you get on the side for now. OK? Well, Emily eats the pickles. You can arm wrestle her for them. OK, that's fine. That's a deal. But when I said you shouldn't just buy them out,

if you're growing pickles, or I'm sorry, growing peppers, you got me on pickles. Pickled peppers. Then you might end up with a lot of peppers, and that's why you might want to freeze them. Pickle them. Or pickle them, if you're into that. Yeah.

Because we grew peppers one year, and they were easy to grow and bountiful. Yeah, pepper plant goes. Yeah. That equals a lot of peppers. I guess we should talk about growing them a little bit, huh? I guess so. They're perennials.

So that means they stick around. Well, it depends on where you live. Yeah, if it's cold, you might grow them as annuals. Right. They're pretty flexible. You can start them as seeds 10 weeks prior to the first frost. You want to germinate them in little trays. First, you soak the seeds for a couple of days.

Then you germinate them with a little bit of starter. Yep. 10 weeks prior to frost. After the last frost comes and goes, you can start to harden them by moving them outside a couple hours at a time. And talk to them, say, this is good for you. Right.

This is for your own good, or you shake them. Yep. Takes a couple of weeks, a few hours each day more, until they are hard and ready. Right. And then they start to grow. You want to fertilize them. When the peppers grow out and turn hard, you can cut them.

And when you do, you want to cut some stem because it extends their shelf life. And then you have peppers. You can also just go to the store and buy some peppers. Yeah. If you're into gardening, garden. Yeah. If not, or?

I'm just growing from seed, man. It seems like such a nightmare to me. Well, it's for people who have time. And what are hobbyists? But I also get, like, if it's an heirloom something. Sure. Or just something you're not going to find anywhere. With peppers, I mean, sure, there are some.

Like, if you want to buy the Carolina Reaper, you can get packs of those seeds for like $10 or something. Oh, yeah? Right. You're not going to find those at any store. So I get growing those from seed. But growing like a squash plant from seed, it's like, what are you doing, man?

You should have better things to do with your time than that. A weaker squash last year. From seed? Yeah. What are you doing, man? We have a garden. Right. But you can just buy the seedlings.

Yeah, you could do that. OK. Are you saying why do people garden? No. I love gardening. OK. I'm just saying growing from seed, a plant. Like, if you like growing from seed,

you should get a seed catalog and find something that you can't find elsewhere. That's what I'm saying. I have a very strong opinion on growing things from seed. So to each their own with everything but gardening. But gardening. We use starter plants a lot, too. Not everything is from seed.

Because you're saying sensible people. But do you see my point? I guess. Do you get seed catalogs? They're fun to look through. Not catalogs, I don't think, but we buy seeds online. You should get your hands on a seed catalog. Yeah.

Yeah, I can't remember the name of the company. That sounds like good toilet book reading. Yes, it is. It's just so, yes, it's very delightful. It makes you so excited for spring. Off-label uses of peppers, we'll say. You can eat them. Or you can rub them on your pain parts.

Yeah, because remember, they overload your noses scepter. That's right. They can lower your blood pressure. They can be anti-quaggulants, like I said. I think that's one and the same. Think about it, if it thins the blood, it's going to also lower your blood pressure. True.

I would think. OK. It's also been shown, Chuck, it lowers bad cholesterol. Not just any cholesterol, it lowers your bad cholesterol. And not only does it lower the cholesterol present in your blood, I think it attracts it. Because remember, it's fat soluble. And then it gets flushed out of the system.

It actually removes the buildup of bad cholesterol plaque in your arteries. This stuff is, it makes me want to eat more peppers. I already eat quite a bit of peppers. I need to eat more, I think. That's good. In the future, they hope to use it for cancer prevention, stroke, heart attack prevention.

All right, I guess what already works is that if it's lowering your blood pressure. That's what I got from that, too. But the cancer, it's its own thing. And they found that capsaicin itself basically attacks tumors. Wow. I mean, are you upset about the growing from seed tirade?

Oh, no, I don't care. OK, good. What, like it was directed at me? Yeah, it didn't mean for it to be. No. But it took a pretty hard turn at the end there. No, no, no. Right to your front door.

I don't care. Right to your garden door. No, no, no, no. But we have an article called Can Ghost Peppers Kill You on our website. It cannot. It's not good. But apparently, three pounds of peppers can kill you.

Is that right? Yeah. How? Like, what's the mode of death? I don't know. They don't say. That's why it's not a good article. Well, so these pain receptors, the TRP.

I mean, it's a toxin, capsaicin is. TRPV1. They're also responsible for regulating your body heat, helping regulate your body heat. So I wonder if you have a heat stroke or something like that. I don't know. I would just say if it's a toxin and you eat too much of any toxin, you could die.

Yeah, but you die from some toxin, slow your respiration, and you stop breathing from lack of oxygen. I bet you have something to do with respiration, because if you are in a hot pepper eating contest, one thing they will talk about is their throat swelling and having a hard time breathing. That'd be my guess. I think there was a Science Daily article originally

that said that. So there is a speaking of ghost peppers. Up until last year in 2014, there was a restaurant in Grantham, Lincolnshire, which I take to be in England, called Bindi. The restaurant was named Bindi. It was an Indian restaurant. And it had a curry called the widower that used 20 ghost

peppers among a ton of other ones. And apparently, they had sold like 500, 600 of them. And about three quarters of the people finished it managed to finish it. Not bad. Which, yeah, if you think like the ghost pepper, that was the one that got all the press in 2007. I think what's remarkable is that people that are ordering

this are probably have a very high tolerance anyway. And if they're not able to finish it, that says a lot. Exactly. So that's chili peppers, everybody. Go forth and eat some. You said that it doesn't give you ulcers. And in fact, it actually helps with cases of ulcers, right? That's right.

Isn't that amazing? It is. OK, so if you want to know more about chili peppers, you can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And it will bring up this article. And I said, search box. I was kind of listening, man.

I'm going to call this a rarely granted shout out. We get requests a lot for shout outs. And we couldn't do them all. Otherwise, our show would be called Shoutouts You Should Know. But this one was from a 14-year-old girl who sounded very sweet. So I'm reading it.

Hi, guys. I'm a 14-year-old girl who's been listening for a long time. And I wanted to say thanks for the time that you spend to make it smarter. It's been really fun for my sister Anna and I to listen to your podcast before we go to sleep. However, she is leaving for college soon to study studio art.

And I'll be all alone when I listen to you guys. So if it isn't too much to ask, could you give her a shout out and tell her that she is an awesome sister and will be missed? Aw. Sarah, you could tell her that yourself too, by the way. You should express your emotions. I don't like to talk.

You can also say to my brothers, Jonathan, Stephen, and Tommy, that they are OK too. Many kids are in this family. Sounds like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That was my guess too. If you, oh, and she said no. Don't mention that sixth one. Just kidding.

If you do this, then you guys will be the best podcasters ever. Not like you aren't already. Actually, Anna just sent an email, or maybe it's Anna, to you guys last night about Hula Hoops. And if you could put both our emails on the air, that would be the best. I'm not going to do that, Sarah. No, I can't do that.

But I did write her back. So this is a secret from Anna, so it would be a big surprise. So Sarah, to Anna, Anna, good luck at college. You will be missed. You're a great sister. That is so nice, Chuck. And the brothers, Jonathan, Stephen, and Tommy, you guys are OK.

Man, that was nice. Very kind of you. You never know. Well, if you want to see if you can tug at Chuck's heartstrings, give her your best shot. Good luck. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.