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
8:40
From an evolutionary perspective, who really has the stranger wings?
8:52
For plants in times of great stress and ecological upheaval, the more DNA the better
9:54
A new group of predators began to hunt nautiloids
9:11
Some of the most important genes were once considered genomic junk.
9:57
How is it possible to have cataclysmic eruptions without any real cataclysm?
10:42
Our brains actually shrank relative to our bodies in evolution.
7:23
Hidden in rocks may have animal kingdom’s oldest known predator.
9:26
Hidden in rocks may have animal kingdom’s oldest known predator.
9:58
Beneath their shell, the crustaceans hold an evolutionary mystery.