Skip to main content
Back to Show
Eons

Why Does Caffeine Exist?

Season 4 Episode 37

Today, billions of people around the world start their day with caffeine. But how and why did the ability to produce this molecule independently evolve in multiple, distantly-related lineages of flowering plants, again and again?

Support Provided By
Season
That Time It Rained for Two Million Years
7:31
234 million years ago, the climate suddenly changed for the wetter.
Journeys Through Geologic Time
12:34
The Cenozoic marks the rise of organisms that look a lot like us.
The Weird, Watery Tale of Spinosaurus
7:28
In 1912, a fossil collector discovered the world’s only known semi-aquatic dinosaur.
The Age of Reptiles in Three Acts
10:45
Reptiles in time grew to become some of the largest forms of life ever to exist on earth.
How the Chalicothere Split In Two
7:03
How did two of the same kind of animal end up looking so different?
How the Squid Lost Its Shell
8:05
Ancestors of cephalopods all had shells until it proved to be their biggest weakness.
What Was the Ancestor of Everything?
11:06
The search for our origins go back to a single common ancestor.
Inside the Dinosaur Library
7:19
We talk to Amy Atwater, Collections Manager at the Museum of the Rockies.
The Most Useful Fossils In The World
5:49
Mysterious fossils can be used to tell time in the deep past.
What a Dinosaur Looks Like Under a Microscope
8:09
What has been observed and learned from putting dinosaur bones under a microscope.
How the Turtle Got Its Shell
8:29
Where did turtles come from? And how did the they get their shells?
The Other Explosion You Should Know About
6:25
The Sudden burst of diversity that marked the dawn of truly complex life on our planet.
Active loading indicator