Skip to main content

Up Next

When Crocs Thrived in the Seas

When Crocs Thrived in the Seas

Season 3 Episode 41
9:08
How To Survive the Little Ice Age

How To Survive the Little Ice Age

Season 3 Episode 42
10:00
When Trees Took Over the World

When Trees Took Over the World

Season 3 Episode 43
7:28
How Weasels Got Skinny

How Weasels Got Skinny

Season 3 Episode 44
9:01
Where Are All The Squid Fossils?

Where Are All The Squid Fossils?

Season 3 Episode 45
7:21
How the Starfish Got Its Arms

How the Starfish Got Its Arms

Season 4 Episode 5
10:53
The Creature That Stumped Darwin

The Creature That Stumped Darwin

Season 4 Episode 6
6:46
How Pollination Got Going Twice

How Pollination Got Going Twice

Season 4 Episode 7
9:32
Back to Show
Eons

How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)

Season 3 Episode 40

Today, chilis are the most widely cultivated spice crop in the world - grown everywhere from their native home in the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia. But how and why did chilis evolve this weird, fiery trick in the first place? And why did we learn to love that spicy burn?

Support Provided By
Season
The Fiery Rise of Flowering Plants
10:45
For flowering plants to take over, they first helped burn the old world—and then put the fires out.
When Ancient Weeds Fooled Us
11:37
Ancient weeds mimicked crops, tricking farmers into domesticating friends—and enemies—by mistake.
How Brawn Led to Brains
12:14
Brains and brawn aren’t opposites—they’ve been linked far longer than we might think.
When a Tiny Land Bridge Triggered an Ice Age
10:27
Understanding the Isthmus of Panama.
How Chewing May Have Beat Extinction
9:35
Tiny mammals and a group of lizard-like reptiles shared a trait that helped them survive extinction.
How We Figured Out an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs
10:43
Where the space rock came from 66 million years ago that crashed and killed the dinosaurs.
Crawling Out Of The Water Was An Evolutionary Accident
8:19
Fish evolved terrestrial traits to...stay fish?
Do Chins Make Us Human?
12:07
We're the only ones with chins, and we don't know why.
The Golden Age of Sharks
12:40
Why did sharks get so incredibly diverse and odd during the Golden Age?
Darwin's Unexpected Final Obsession
12:12
What was Charles Darwin really obsessed with?
Are All Oceans Basically Reincarnated?
12:29
Did you know ocean basins are reincarnated?
Could This Sperm Whale Eat The Meg?
8:36
How did such a large predator survive?
Active loading indicator