Capsicumology (CHILE PEPPERS) with Paul Bosland

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  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. Ally 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 Jared, we call him your podmother. 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 the state. And I was so excited. I was honestly not prepared. Wearing all black. My God, it's hot. Passing this beautiful

• 0:47Alie Ward?

  building that has paintings of peppers. Oh, does it say Chili Man? Oh, my God, that's amazing.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  He must be nearby.

• 0:56Alie Ward?

  A license plate that says Chili Man. I was prepared with information, though. So this ologist studied plant genetics from undergrad until his PhD, and for decades has led the chili breeding program at the university. He's been a Regent's 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 this red truck, we knew we're 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.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  You found us.

• 1:39Alie Ward?

  I found you.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I'm Papa.

• 1:43Alie Ward?

  What's up? I'm Ally Ward. Nice to meet you. This is Jared Sleeper, also a punk. Hey, y'all, how are you? Oh, it's cooler in here, isn't it? We went to a nearby classroom, and we chatted all about the shape of peppers, 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/ologies and submit their questions before we record. Thank you to everyone out there wearing Ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com. And thanks to everyone spreading the word about Smologies. Those are our kid-friendly and classroom-safe episodes in their own feed.

• 2:26Alie Ward?

  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 Ollie Outside, who wrote, "This podcast will reignite your childlike wonder and broaden your perspective like nothing else will." Ollie 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. Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle. Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more

• 3:07Alie Ward?

  than help protect you. It makes you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit mazdausa.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Ugh, trips are full of unexpected discoveries. Maybe you see a sea slug, or you find out that your friend still sleeps with a stuffed animal. But when it comes to your vacation rental, there should not be any surprises. When you book a Verbo vacation rental, if what you expect isn't what you get, Verbo Care has you covered. If something's broken or just not right, Verbo will work to make it right. Plus, you get 24/7 live human support with every booking. Grab your stuffy. We're going on vacay. So book today on the

• 3:52Alie Ward?

  Verbo app. If you know, you're Verbo. Terms apply. See verbo.com/trust for details. Okay, capsicumology comes from the Latin capsae, 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 doubt? It's really capsu. It's in the mouth of the holder. 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,

• 4:37Alie Ward?

  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 peppers, capsicumologist Dr. Paul "The Chili Man" Bosland.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  It's Paul Bosland.

• 5:23Alie Ward?

  And we're in south New Mexico.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 5:26Alie Ward?

  Like, we're pretty close to Texas, right?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Very close, 40 miles away.

• 5:30Alie Ward?

  40 miles away.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  And that means Mexico, too.

• 5:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah, it's hot down here, man.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yes, it is.

• 5:34Alie Ward?

  It's 101 out there.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  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.

• 5:46Alie Ward?

  What?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  They're actually native to tropical rainforest. They want 68, 72 degrees with a gentle rain every three days. And what we have done as humans, adapted them to grow here.

• 5:57Alie Ward?

  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.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:09Alie Ward?

  Which I realized, what, it must be named for the chili, right? Is Hatch the capital of?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  That's a very interesting story. Hatch is 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, lilarde, they're named after the valleys. Those are the land races. Here at New Mexico State University, in 1888, when 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. And so he began to look at all these different kinds 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.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  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's called chili pasilla, 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.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  We, nobody had seen that, so we call it a New Mexican pod type, coming from here.

• 7:46Alie Ward?

  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.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  And so to answer Hatch, Hatch 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.

• 8:43Alie Ward?

  And speaking of names, how are we spelling this word, everyone? Is there a consensus? C-H-I-L-I? C-H-I-L-L-I? C-H-I-L-E? Is there a Y in it? What's happening?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  And we choose chile, the Spanish form, because the word comes from the Aztec language. And it was chil. They didn't have a written language, but when they talked about chili peppers, chil, we had chutipin, which meant the flea chili. Chipotle, smoked chili. So the Spanish took chil, made it into a noun by adding the e. Chili is the Texas dish with beans and meat. And if you go to the store and you buy chil powder, you get chile powder plus onion, garlic, and other things. So you won't always buy chile powder if you only want the chili. And then the British add extra letters in all their words. And so they can't even spell flavor right.

• 9:42Alie Ward?

  It's like, leave you out of it. We got enough letters in there.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, so yes, chili, chili and chile really do have meanings in the industry now.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Consider yourself informed.

• 9:54Alie Ward?

  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. Frutescence, bacatum, and pubescence. 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 jalapenos, the bell peppers, the cherries, the poblanos. Those are the species capsicum annum.

• 10:39Alie Ward?

  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 sized. 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?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  It is, and the typical or the standard New Mexico chili pot 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 locules, we call it, they give it 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 celled, about six inches. But we do have the world's biggest chili pepper called New Mex Big Jim, which is in the Guinness Book of Records, it's like thirteen and a half inches long. So they can get quite big.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Too big.

• 11:36Alie Ward?

  And are those eaten, or are they ornamental?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Oh, they're eaten 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.

• 11:55Alie Ward?

  How come no one knows that paprika is a pepper? I feel like that is under the radar.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Well, that's why we have the Chili Pepper Institute, to educate the world about chili peppers. That's my mission.

• 12:07Alie Ward?

  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, 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 it 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 and, red or green chili, what, what does that question mean?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  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 want, 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.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  And if you have them in your home garden, pick some green, let them turn red, and then you have the red chilies.

• 13:33Alie Ward?

  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.

• 14:18Alie Ward?

  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.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  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.

• 14:43Alie Ward?

  But you guys make it work somehow.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 14:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah. You gotta.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  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 ristas on our front porch.

• 15:05Alie Ward?

  Okay, this was something I was gonna ask you also, straight off the bat. I didn't know it was called a ristra. 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?

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Ristra 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 the there to make your sauces and stuff. And it's, 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 on the horizon, you'd go up to it. And if they had a ristra, you could knock on the door, spend the night. But if they didn't have a ristra, 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 ristra's, because that was a symbol of they had a bountiful season, so you wouldn't be a burden.

• 16:04Alie Ward?

  That is so beautiful. I had no idea. That is such a beautiful sentiment.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  And the, 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 then 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 capsaicinoids 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, a sore muscle liniment. And even today, if you go into a pharmaceutical store, you'll see things like capsaicin, not spelt like the compound, but it's pronounced the same. Uh, heat, H E E T.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And these have chili heat as the active ingredient.

• 16:56Alie Ward?

  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?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  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 here in Arizona, there's wild chiltpenins, 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 all the other pods you see. And so that was the original chili pepper, was that small chiltpen.

• 17:38Alie Ward?

  And now, birds play a huge part in pepper distribution, I understand, partly because they can't taste the heat?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  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 caucesein always kept mammals from eating the fruit and the seeds, because the seeds are destroyed.

• 18:04Alie Ward?

  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?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Well, with birds, they don't taste the heat, and it goes through, and they can spread the seed, and with a fertilizer pellet, where 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 it's kind of loves us now, too.

• 18:49Alie Ward?

  And then cultivated 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.

• 19:04Speaker 05

  The absolute hottest is ashes to ashes. That one has sixty-three percent pepper mash of the seven pot primo pepper. That's one of the world's super hot, which is over a million scolable units. It's hotter than the ghost pepper.

• 19:19Speaker 06

  We do have samples of that also if you want.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  Did you want to try a sample?

• 19:24Alie Ward?

  No, I trust you. I trust you. I'm trusting you guys with my life.

• 19:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's too hot.

• 19:30Alie Ward?

  Literally ashes to ashes.

• 19:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 19:32Alie Ward?

  I love it. It's liquid cremation essentially.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  It is. It comes with a warning label on the bottle. We also love when we call it rashes to rashes.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  Our boss, her, one of her past boyfriends came in and he tried it. That night, he broke out and died. He was covered in rashes because he had an allergic reaction to how much capsaicin is in there.

• 19:54Speaker 06

  Oh my god.

• 19:56Alie Ward?

  Can you imagine if that was your cause of death?

• 19:57Speaker 06

  No, literally.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Well, that's an interesting thing. There are people you've seen that can eat really, really hot chilies.

• 20:04Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  And other people say, oh, gosh, I can't eat them because jalapeno is too hot for me.

• 20:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  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, 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.

• 20:40Alie Ward?

  So sometimes people are saying that they are tougher, but really, they might just have fewer receptors.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 20:47Alie Ward?

  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.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Exactly. And another thing is each capsaicinoid reacts differently. You know, there's twenty-four different capsaicinoids that cause chili heat. And some will react to the tip of your tongue, your lips, some mid palate, some in the throat. And you will react to these different capsaicinoids differently. And I always like to tell a story. I had a researcher from India and China visiting me, and I took them 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.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  And then in China, or Szechuan, is what they like.

• 21:39Alie Ward?

  So this story is very adorable to me. It sounds like three kids sitting at a cafeteria table comparing their packed lunches. Your podmother, Jarrett, piped up with a good one here.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Seems kind of interesting to me that so many cultures that it 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?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  That's a good question, and I wrote a paper about that because the people will say, oh, you sweat and you cool off. Well, no, in those countries, the humidity is high and sweating doesn't do it. Turns out what it is, is the capsaicinoids get rid of intestinal bugs, worms. 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 climates, food spoils. And the chili capsaicinoids will work on bacteria, parasites and stuff. And so it keeps you healthy that way, and that's why they do it.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Does that mean that works then also like preserving the meat before you eat it?

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, exactly. That was a tradition was to put red chili on meat and dry it. And that way it would be preserved.

• 22:45Alie Ward?

  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 Capsaicin 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.

• 23:19Alie Ward?

  Against foodborne 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 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.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  For hot sauce, what you do is you take the chilies, usually cayenne's, 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, Frank's hot sauces. We don't do Tabasco because we can't grow them here. The fruits are so small, they're pretty much all imported.

• 24:11Alie Ward?

  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

• 24:54Alie Ward?

  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?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  The Bhutjolokia.

• 25:27Alie Ward?

  The Bhutjolokia, which was developed in Northeast India, right?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:31Alie Ward?

  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?

• 25:46Alie Ward?

  From South American chilies and then they've just spread around the world because people move things around.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  All chilies are native to the Western Hemisphere.

• 25:54Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  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.

• 26:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah, this guy could not get things right.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  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 butchelokia 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, we never were able to do it. And then we had a chili head that visited, um, Assam. And then he says, well, I have one here. And he said, do you want seed? And we grew it. Yeah. And we grew it out and found out, oh yes, this is very hot. So we did replicated trials with controls and it was the very first chili pepper ever to hit 1 million Scoville heat units.

• 26:52Alie Ward?

  Bonkers. So according to a 2013 article titled, "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 Nicolas 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.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I said, well, why do they call it butchelokia? 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.

• 27:38Alie Ward?

  And I do think that one of the creative aspects of chilies 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?

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes.

• 28:03Alie Ward?

  It is? This is a subculture I didn't know about?

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 28:06Alie Ward?

  Who are these people?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  They're people that that love their chili peppers and we've 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.

• 28:25Alie Ward?

  Do you think that they have fewer receptors or more and they are just tougher?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Um, I, I don't think, I don't think we're, there's any correlation there.

• 28:35Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  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 cool 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.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  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, 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, why? She says, I said, well, her name was Oo. I said, oh, 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.

• 29:50Alie Ward?

  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?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  I was. My dad was a gardener. My mom gardened. 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 an art. You had to learn from somebody. Find a master and then, you know, 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.

• 30:36Alie Ward?

  And for future horticulturists out there, UC Davis offers a cornucopia of agricultural delights. They have anastology. They got donkey people. They got crops, flowers, vet science, and an extensive enology program for wine.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  What I like to tell people, chili peppers are like wine. The first time you taste a 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 enologists, the winemakers use, we use in chili peppers. There's herbaceous, there's grassy, 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 habanero because they were so hot. But they have a very citrus, very different aroma and flavor.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  So we developed a habanero without the heat or very low heat called suave, which means mild in 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 X 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

• 32:18Speaker 02

  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 jalapeno flavor, we could use this as a blending agent. And so we did. We released one called Numex Primavera. And there's a, I don't know, not a contest per se, but it's called the Ig Nobel at Harvard.

• 32:38Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  And they gave me the Ig Nobel for making a spiceless jalapeno.

• 32:42Alie Ward?

  So the Ig Nobel 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...

• 33:04Speaker 02

  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 mild, because turns out habanero flavor blends very nicely with fish.

• 33:21Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  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 us and said, can you make us a no heat one? And so we have Nobasco, which is a no heat Tabasco.

• 33:42Alie Ward?

  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 their other flavors?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of them are mild nowadays. It's interesting, when we first started... The produce people back east said jalapenos are really too hot for our population. We need mild jalapenos. And so that was another impetus for our New Mex Primavera. And but now seed 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.

• 34:36Alie Ward?

  Oh, amazing.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  You can spin the wheel and you can say, oh, these are the flavors I will have in this chili.

• 34:41Alie Ward?

  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 hyper focus. Hours at a time, just sit and looking at the wheel, spinning it, learning, loving.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  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 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 Pavlov's dog. 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 is heat.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  You need bitter, sour, sweet, salty and hot. And I said, 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.

• 35:57Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm. 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.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  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. Don't they ever stop and enjoy a meal?

• 36:24Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  And I said, that's a good point, you know, we just take it for granted. I'm gonna 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. And so I think maybe that helps with chili peppers. Now I'm gonna sit down and I'll savor this flavor.

• 36:41Alie Ward?

  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.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Sobremesa.

• 36:50Alie Ward?

  Sobremesa, what does that mean?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  It's like above the table.

• 36:53Alie Ward?

  Sobremesa, 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.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Yeah.

• 37:31Alie Ward?

  So, speaking of

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 37:34Alie Ward?

  Eating in the car as Americans, guilty as charged. 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?

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Right, right. Well, first off, Mr. Scoville worked for a pharmaceutical company and they made the cream heat. And so they had to standardize it. So he had to come up a way with how hot are the chilies we're gonna 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 it, it was 10,000 heat units.

• 38:41Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  If you diluted it 100 to one, 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.

• 38:50Alie Ward?

  So this is like inverse detection. It is a scale that relies on what experts can't taste.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  I hope you're hungry for nothing. But you also get what's called tasteless 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, counts them, and tells us how many parts per million we have. And 16 parts per million equal one Scoville heat unit. So pure capsaicin is 16 million Scoville heat units.

• 39:30Alie Ward?

  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.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Sure, I get that question a lot.

• 39:47Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  And being a research institute at New Mexico State University, we have to do it more scientifically, I would say. So whenever we test a chili 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.

• 40:13Speaker 05

  What do you mean? What do you mean?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  And then we do statistics on the data we collect to see if there's significant differences. And so far, the Maruga scorpion has been the world's hottest chili pepper. But Guinness has its own way of doing things. I'm not going to say it's good or bad, it's their way. But at the Chili Pepper Institute, because we'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.

• 40:45Alie Ward?

  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 bred by a guy named Ed Curry of the Pucker Butt Pepper Company. And according to a 2023 BBC article titled Guinness World Records Crowns 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."

• 41:30Alie Ward?

  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 PALS who certify the ghost pepper as the world's then reigning hottest around 2007 to 2011. Well, what was it like when you realized that the ghost pepper was over a million?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Um, 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 a 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.

• 42:18Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  We got it. And so. It's interesting, in New Mexico, these super hot, I've called these, this class of super hot, it's anything over 1 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.

• 42:32Alie Ward?

  But Paul hopes that undersung and more utilitarian everyday beauties can share the spotlight, like the ají amarillo, which is spelled A-J-I, ají, which is this skinny, just a crayon yellow, sunshiny pepper, which brings this mellower spice and a nuance to dishes like ceviche, he says. But alas, without some trophy to bear, these very scrumptious and highly palatable peppers, like the yellow ají amarillo, stay in the colder shadows. It doesn't make the clickbait headlines as much, right?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 43:08Alie Ward?

  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 tararos, tararos?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Taro.

• 43:23Alie Ward?

  Taro, merci.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  French word.

• 43:26Alie Ward?

  I can never say that word. But what is it about the different soil conditions that change it?

• 43:31Speaker 02

  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 cuttings. 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. The plant is stressed, 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

• 44:11Speaker 02

  little rain. And so anything in the environment that the plant senses, it has an effect, changes that flavor of the fruit.

• 44:20Alie Ward?

  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?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 44:48Alie Ward?

  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?

• 45:03Speaker 02

  You cannot tell anything about a chili heat from the outside, I'm afraid.

• 45:07Alie Ward?

  Ah, okay.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Then 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 is 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 said to me, do you have any friends?

• 45:31Speaker 02

  And I said, well, yeah, you know, the trick only works once.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  But, uh.

• 45:37Alie Ward?

  Please, people, don't use that tip for evil. All right, there's enough malice in the world already.

• 45:45Alie Ward?

  For revenge, though, that's different.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  And so that's what you have to do. You cut them open and you see how much, the more yellow, the hotter it 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.

• 46:04Alie Ward?

  Can I ask some questions from listeners?

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:06Alie Ward?

  Okay, amazing, because this was also on my mind. Okay, several people, Abby, Virginia Bruce, Rob H., Nicole, John Mace, Ashley Oki, Andrew McCabe, the sassy Shorke, Sarah Conlean 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 of his choosing in 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 too. They have so many things for sale.

• 46:51Alie Ward?

  You can stop by their air conditioned shop. In Lusgrusus, 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 and 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. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need.

• 47:36Alie Ward?

  That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before Ologies existed. After procrastinating for years, I literally built my website in one evening. They have templates, they have flexible editing tools. Squarespace also makes it easy to share your work. You can book clients, you can get paid. They have built-in tools for scheduling and invoicing and email all in one place. Whenever someone I know needs a website, whether they're a scientist that needs to put their work up, or someone who's just starting a business, I'm like, dude, Squarespace. So, head to Squarespace.com/ologies for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code OLOGIES

• 48:19Alie Ward?

  to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it. Peppa Pig is your preschooler's best friend. Give the gift of bike-riding confidence this year, and help Peppa learn to ride her bike. Kids can imagine learning to ride a bike with the Ready Pedal Go Peppa Bicycle Playset. Put Peppa's helmet on, attach the push stick to her bike, and push to make her pedal. Ready Pedal Go Peppa and more from Peppa Pig are now available at all major retailers this holiday season.

• 48:54Alie Ward?

  Listen, sometimes you get out of your routine. That happened to me recently when I went out of town and I realized I forgot my Ritual Essential for Women 18+. It's a multi that I've been taking for years. And guess who landed in another country without them? Me. Didn't feel right. They contain nine key nutrients, two delayed-release capsules designed for optimal absorption. But Ritual, why do I love them so much? They have a team of scientists. They poured over thousands of studies to figure out what are common gaps that people need in their diet, but they don't actually consume. It's also designed to be gentle on the stomach. You can take it with or without food, which I love. Plus, I like that it looks like a tiny lava lamp. I tell you that every time, but it has these beads and oil. And it tastes like mint, easy down the hatch. I usually take them in the morning.

• 49:39Alie Ward?

  And the reason why I've stuck with Ritual for so many years is because my schedule's all over the place. Sometimes I'm eating breakfast, sometimes I'm running through an airport with one shoe. So instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. Save 25% on your first month at ritual.com/ologies. That's ritual.com/ologies for 25% off your first month.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  How do you want to split it?

• 50:03Alie Ward?

  Actually, dinner's on me.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  Okay, big money.

• 50:05Alie Ward?

  Well, I got a Venmo balance that I can spend with my Venmo debit MasterCard, so...

• 50:10Speaker 04

  Well, I Venmo'd you three times last week, so it's kinda on me, actually.

• 50:14Alie Ward?

  Yeah, you send it, I spend it.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Did my money get reincarnated?

• 50:17Alie Ward?

  Yeah, it's chicken shawarma. Want it back?

• 50:20Speaker 04

  I can't believe you ate my Venmo.

• 50:23Alie Ward?

  Spend your balance instantly with the Venmo debit card. No monthly fee or minimum balance. Venmo balance account required to get a card and use a balance. A Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank, N.A. Insurance may all seem the same on the surface, but having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like getting a granola bar with a candle in it when you wanted a three-layer birthday cake. You wouldn't settle for just any dessert on your birthday. So don't settle for just any insurance. When it comes to getting the help you need, State Farm is the real deal. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 50:55Alie Ward?

  Okay, when luck be a lady who likes hot peppers, how does one win at shishito roulette?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  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 GBI, we say.

• 51:14Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Wherever you grow it, it'll be kind of the same heat. And with shishito, it was kind of like Big Jim, the old Big Jim chilies, you never know it was going to be very hot or very mild because they didn't fix the heat. The plants are very variable. So every seed you planted was roulette. And so shishito's that way. You plant a seed, that plant may make hot ones or may make mild ones. I think some of the newer ones are being more uniform because unfortunately, in the food industry, uniformity is what 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

• 51:59Speaker 02

  they're canned because that way you can make it more uniform for the industry.

• 52:04Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow. But part of what I think is fun about shishito is the roulette.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 52:09Alie Ward?

  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?

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Right. We studied how the chili plants make heat. And what we found is that the first fruits are hotter than the later fruits because the capsaicinoids are made from what we call secondary compounds, secondary metabolites. And so the first fruit uses up a lot of them. The next one's use whatever's left. And so as you go up, there's less and less of these secondary metabolites. And so again, the plant's protecting that first fruit because that's, if that's all I've got, I 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've got one plant and you look at the fruit, the bottom will always be the hottest.

• 52:53Alie Ward?

  Really? The bo- 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 that just dovetailed to another. One question always leads to another.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:14Alie Ward?

  When you're talking-

• 53:14Speaker 02

  And everybody has a chili pepper story.

• 53:16Alie Ward?

  I know.

• 53:18Alie Ward?

  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?

• 53:26Speaker 02

  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 spoilt. It's like you eating just candy and chocolate. You'll get big and fat. But if we're making you, you know, work a little bit, you stay thin. And so, 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.

• 54:11Alie Ward?

  And chilies are a fruit?

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:14Alie Ward?

  Yes. Mike Campbell wanted to know, nightshades? So chilies are specifically nightshades are related to eggplants?

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called the solenaceous family, nightshade. It's interesting that a lot of solenaceous 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 solenaceous that only bloomed at night. So the nightshade, and nightshade meant you die. And so there's all this. And chilies were very interesting. They wouldn't eat tomatoes when they first went to Europe because they thought they were a nightshade, a solenaceous. They're poisonous. But chilies were instantly consumed because they thought they were black pepper. They missed 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.

• 55:04Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yes, they make a famous soup, chicken soup with them.

• 55:07Alie Ward?

  And 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 avoiding nightshades, you're like, what's all that about? That has been recommended by some doctors for people with inflammatory diseases

• 55:49Alie Ward?

  or autoimmune conditions, but more data is needed. And I found a 2024 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 eye on. And of course, talk to a rheumatologist or listen to our Allergyology 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

• 56:33Alie Ward?

  of the number of lobes at the base indicating a male or female fruit? Is a four-chambered or three-chambered pepper?

• 56:43Speaker 02

  No, chili flowers are what we say perfect. They have both male and female parts.

• 56:48Alie Ward?

  Oh, 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?

• 56:57Speaker 02

  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 fields 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.

• 57:25Alie Ward?

  Honestly.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, but next year, you couldn't probably provide them, but there they are.

• 57:29Alie Ward?

  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 the sterile offspring of two totally fertile varieties of watermelon. But they have to be cross pollinated with each other's pollen by bees in 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.

• 58:09Alie Ward?

  Robin Coon, Brennethole, Erin Gossi, Katie, Jaclyn Vigalia, Julia Gray, Taylor Clinton, Franz Become-Lavers, Brian Eng, Erin Grassi, 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 demon manifesting 20 minutes, but then it would fade. So what is happening with the hands? Jalapeno hands. Why does it hurt more? How do you get rid of it?

• 58:51Speaker 02

  This is a very complex question.

• 58:53Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  There's actually a medical term for it. It's called hoonan hands.

• 58:57Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  And that's what you get when you bare 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.

• 59:19Alie Ward?

  No.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  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...

• 59:40Alie Ward?

  Ramsey?

• 59:40Speaker 04

  Who's cooked the diapers?

• 59:41Speaker 05

  No diapers, sir. That's smoked chicken enchiladas with fublano cream sauce. My name is Colleen.

• 59:46Speaker 04

  Kareem.

• 59:46Speaker 05

  Colleen.

• 59:47Speaker 04

  Kareem.

• 59:48Speaker 05

  Colleen.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, Gordon Ramsey goes to India and there's a lady who takes the ghost pepper and rubs it in her eyes.

• 59:53Alie Ward?

  No!

• 59:54Speaker 02

  And I think this woman has no heat receptors anywhere and so she can probably do that. She can eat it and all that.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  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 Andita has decided to up the ante. She's going to try to rub more than 12 chilies in her eyes in under one...

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  But, you know, most of us have these to protect ourselves.

• 1:00:18Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  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'd choke to death. So she has to be very, very careful, she says. So it shows you the variation we have in our, among us.

• 1:00:39Alie Ward?

  Wonder the one with, in the eyes, was she a bird or something?

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Alie Ward?

  Absolute ornithological genius?

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Or, you know, does she just want to be on Gordon Ramsey's TV show? I don't know.

• 1:00:49Alie Ward?

  There are other ways than rubbing a ghost pepper in your eye. But, um, oh, well, you mentioned Preparation H, so let's get, let's get to that question that you know is coming. Um, let me see.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  What's the best way to cut the heat?

• 1:01:04Alie Ward?

  Yeah, to cut the heat, but no, this is the, this question was about the lower half of the body.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:09Alie Ward?

  If you have eaten some chili and let me see, um, forget what.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  It's twice as good.

• 1:01:16Alie Ward?

  It's twice as good. Yorkshire Teabag 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 Yola, 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?

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, there's, the heat receptors are not in your stomach and intestines. So that's, your body senses it, but you don't feel the heat. Uh, one of the good things about eating chili peppers 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, I made what I call my boot kicking 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.

• 1:02:23Alie Ward?

  You also can't eat the whole pan, probably, right?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. This is kind of a fun story. We have a, 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. Now that, oh, I'll take them and see what happens. They were really, really hot and people were, oh my God. But people were taking them and putting them in a napkin to take home. And I said, what are you going, 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? Are you 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.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  They made three batches of different heat levels, brought the public in, tasted them, took a survey, found out the best level. And so we used to make Dr. B's boot kicking 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.

• 1:03:26Alie Ward?

  I was going to say, you could sell it, sell it in the gift shop.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  We should.

• 1:03:29Alie Ward?

  But when I think about someone who was in California in the sixties and seventies and they're bringing brownies to a party that need a warning.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 1:03:39Alie Ward?

  Ghost pepper is not what I would think would be in them.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:03:42Alie Ward?

  And on that note, Han the Bee, Tiger Yudi, uh, Shivani, Rajan, Hetzel, Cam 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.

• 1:03:57Alie Ward?

  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, which that was news to me. Is it relative to the spice? You get more endorphins?

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Correct. What happens is your body sense 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 runner's high.

• 1:04:25Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  And so it gives you a good feeling. And so in a sense, when you eat chilies, not only do we enjoy that flavor, we feel good.

• 1:04:32Alie Ward?

  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 endorphin high, I mean, sometimes I go for a run and I feel way better.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I guess if it feels good, then do it, right?

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:48Alie Ward?

  Greg Wallach, Dana, Hannah Monash, Samuel Shar, Mini Mini, Ellie Taylor, first time question asker Katie, you are Gency, Josie, I'm telling you, a lot of people. Cockkitten6969 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 lutin, like that-

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Lutin?

• 1:05:16Alie Ward?

  Lutin, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the work that you're doing in health?

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Right. And one of the programs we started right when I was ending my career here was to make chilies more nutritious. We got super hot. Do we really need a 3 million scoville heat unit? Probably not.

• 1:05:32Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  But we should make them more nutritious. What we did is we released one jalapeno that has four different colors. We were saying, well, if you put that in your Texas cornbread, you'd have confetti cornbread.

• 1:05:44Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's so cute.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  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 peppers. Paprika is actually in Hungary.

• 1:06:06Alie Ward?

  So he gets the Nobel, you get the Ig Nobel.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:09Alie Ward?

  Unfair.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then, um, vitamin A, they're very high in, 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, in an ounce of chili peppers than there is in 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, a chili pepper with high lutein that could be used in the food industry? And so we released a, um, serrano, which is to be used in salsas. And we called it New Max Lotta Lutein.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  And, and so we were hoping the industry would take that and mix it in their salsas and you would get a lot of lutein when you, in the salsa. So yeah, they're very nutritious and very good for you.

• 1:07:01Alie Ward?

  And I understand that, um, that lutein can help with macular degeneration.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:07:05Alie Ward?

  There's been a connection there, which in New Mexico, I just went to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and she had macular degeneration.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. I learned something. You should learn something every day. And I just learned something.

• 1:07:16Alie Ward?

  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 Wainas. 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?

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  You can, but, um, it would take a lot.

• 1:07:49Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  And, and usually your body will shut down before you consume enough.

• 1:07:54Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:08:08Alie Ward?

  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, Jared Sleeper.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  I get, I'm here, so I get to ask. Uh, on ill effects intentionally, tear gas is, uh, yes, capsaicin? How do they do that? And, and can that kill you if you have too much sprayed on your face or something like that?

• 1:08:33Alie Ward?

  Thank you very much, sleeper.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, pepper spray is what's replaced, actually, tear gas. And the reason is, is that humans can't override pepper heat or the capsaicin. Or 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.

• 1:08:57Alie Ward?

  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 lacrimater. And the maudlin among us might recognize the word lacrimose for tearful. But yeah, tear gas can be brand name mace, or it can be any kind of oleoresin capsicum, AKA OC pepper spray. That's what they call it. Or chemical agents, including non-ivamide, phenyl chloride, bromoacetone, etc. And so tear gas used to refer to just the human-made chemical compound sprays, but it also technically includes OC or that high-concentration pepper spray.

• 1:09:42Alie Ward?

  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, "While tear gas has been outlawed as a method of warfare 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 packing? 5.3 million Scoville heat units. So like two pepper Xs to the face.

• 1:10:27Alie Ward?

  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 genocidology episodes on humanitarian law, both of which... May get you a little hot under the collar.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  But yeah, it can hurt you. It can blister. And so with anything, you have to, I think, be careful.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Is that bear spray as well?

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  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 science is 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.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Oh, I guess you have to hope that the bear's not from New Mexico and likes spicy food, though, huh?

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'll be here all week.

• 1:11:39Alie Ward?

  He really was there all week. I had 11 days, in fact, of a 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 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% of the time, depending on the species of bear. But of all persons carrying sprays,

• 1:12:24Alie Ward?

  it concluded 98% were uninjured by bears in close-range encounters. So yeah, bear spray, it works. And we do have a few ursinology 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.

• 1:13:06Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  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, 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 mice like chili heat.

• 1:13:33Alie Ward?

  You know, I, 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, they prefer, because they grew up with it, which is hilarious to think of New Mexican mice being like, I can handle it. And only a couple more questions. I know we've kept you here forever.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  I could talk about chili peppers all day.

• 1:14:04Alie Ward?

  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, how have you seen pop culture or general public consensus?

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  What we find is that the younger generation likes hot and sweet.

• 1:14:33Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  The older generation, like my parents, like tangy, vinegary, like sauerkraut. I actually worked on cabbage for sauerkraut in Wisconsin for my PhD. And unfortunately, sauerkraut 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 Reuben sandwich kind of saved them. And so, so sauerkraut, 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.

• 1:15:13Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:15:32Alie Ward?

  And as someone who studied sauerkraut and also is an absolute legend in the chili pepper world, how do you feel about kimchi?

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  I keep a jar in my refrigerator all the time.

• 1:15:42Alie Ward?

  You do?

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  Whenever I eat Asian at 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.

• 1:15:56Alie Ward?

  It's great for you, right?

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. It has lots of...

• 1:15:59Alie Ward?

  Probiotics?

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Probiotics.

• 1:16:01Alie Ward?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  It's loaded with probiotics, so it's good for you.

• 1:16:03Alie Ward?

  What kind of chilies in that?

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  In Korea, it's Korean chilies. But here, they use usually... Well, this is another story I can tell you. I can just keep going on.

• 1:16:14Alie Ward?

  I love it.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:16:28Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  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 paintbrushed 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, "We like this, yeah." And now we actually sent 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. And so what I did is I came up with what's 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?

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  Does it dissipate quickly or does it linger? Where do you sense it? Tip of your tongue, mid-pallet, 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 Scoville's. And so jalapeno come on quickly dissipate fairly rapidly be the tip of your tongue. Habaneros 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 will take a first bite. Oh, 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 there.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  And one of the administrators came over and took it. I took a bite and bright red. I thought, oh, my God, he's going to drop dead. Bright red gets on the wagon and it leaves. But then I saw the administrator later, like two hours and he goes, I'm still burning. I'm still burning. And 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.

• 1:18:19Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Exactly. Mm hmm. And the person, the individual too. So you have to have these receptors to be able to taste those heat, different kinds of heats.

• 1:18:38Alie Ward?

  What about hot ones? What about the hot ones effect?

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  The show you mean?

• 1:18:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah, the show. How, do you love it?

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  You can cut this off because I've never, I've never watched it. I don't even know it.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 1:18:54Alie Ward?

  What? How have you never watched it? Do you have a computer or a phone?

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, you know, I maybe I get enough of it at work, I guess. I don't know. I just never watched.

• 1:19:07Alie Ward?

  That, that is an answer I never could have anticipated. That's amazing. Do you feel like it's too much celebrity interview, not enough pepper talk?

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  I, 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.

• 1:19:23Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  And so he's, 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 just gonna, I'm gonna give myself pain with chili peppers? It just doesn't make sense to me.

• 1:19:38Alie Ward?

  What about lip plumpers? Have you heard about lip plumpers?

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:19:41Alie Ward?

  They make lip plumpers go to any cosmetics counter and.

• 1:19:47Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Never heard of it.

• 1:19:58Alie Ward?

  I'll, I'll send you some. See what you think of it.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I need pumped lips.

• 1:20:05Alie Ward?

  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. 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 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, Fuzz Goddess, Alex Alottal, 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

• 1:20:51Alie Ward?

  dish soap? What is it?

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  No, we've actually done studies and it turns out, milk is the best product to cut the heat. 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.

• 1:21:08Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  And then last is carbohydrate bread. So in New Mexico, we have two desserts usually. One is flan, which is milk and sugar.

• 1:21:17Alie Ward?

  Sopa pía?

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, sopa pía is with honey. And so you get the bread and the sweet that way. And that cleanses the palate.

• 1:21:24Alie Ward?

  What if you get it in your eyeball or elsewhere?

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  All you can do, I have a story. My daughter was young and she was taking the seeds out of chili peppers, use them as coins with her doll. And she got them in her eye. And of course, dad, I'm calling the hospital, the emergency room. What do I do? And they said, all you gotta 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.

• 1:21:52Alie Ward?

  Does she remember it? Does she ever bring it up?

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:22:02Alie Ward?

  Oh, what about you? How hot do you go?

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  I don't go very hot. Medium is probably where I like it. I do have a lot of receptors. So I get to taste, you know, oh, that's a jalapeno in that sauce, or 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.

• 1:22:20Alie Ward?

  And your wife?

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  Um, somewhat. Even though being a native New Mexican, you know, she plays along with me. We'll be somewhere and she'll go, oh, I think that's the same. And I'll go, I think you're right.

• 1:22:30Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's so cute. The couple that sweats out peppers together.

• 1:22:35Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. That's right.

• 1:22:37Alie Ward?

  What's the hardest part about your job?

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, it's easier for me. The best part was the students.

• 1:22:43Alie Ward?

  I know. That's my next question.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  My best part was all the students, seeing them, you know, mature, grow, learn, talking to people about chili peppers. 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, they got to do the science. That was the fun part. I'm just trying to hustle up a buck to pay for the things, you know, so, you know, but I really had a wonderful career. I enjoyed it.

• 1:23:23Alie Ward?

  If you had a favorite chili pepper, do you have a favorite chili pepper or is that impossible?

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  That's impossible because I tell people, it's like your children. You don't have a favorite child.

• 1:23:33Alie Ward?

  Well, parents, they do, don't they? They do. What if you, okay, top three.

• 1:23:43Alie Ward?

  Top three favorite chili peppers.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  Well, I say for me, because I know the chilies so well, it would be say, well, what do you want to use it on? If I wanted to make a chili rieno, I would probably use a puplano. If I wanted to, I actually used the chil- the peens and put it in with apple jelly on turkey breasts. And then jalapenos for cornbread, the ahis for ceviche. So there's all these chilies that I know and I use in different ways.

• 1:24:12Alie Ward?

  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?

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:24:24Alie Ward?

  You ready for that?

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  We're ready.

• 1:24:25Alie Ward?

  All right.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  I have students that are ready.

• 1:24:29Alie Ward?

  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 to the end. Now that I've said that, I feel like I 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 Jared's 80-year-old grandma to Todd, our chef friend, became instantly obsessed with this stuff. So that was heidiesjamfactory.com. What a discovery.

• 1:25:12Alie Ward?

  But yeah, the Chili Pepper Institute, their whole gift shop, one-stop shopping. I have a box of jam I'm going home with. And I'm like, you're gonna have to order some more of this.

• 1:25:22Alie Ward?

  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 chilies. 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 one thing, which I have not yet tried, and that is the ashes to ashes. Gimme a minute. Okay, but first you can find the LinkedIn, 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, a blue sky, and I'm at Ally Ward, just one L and Ally on both.

• 1:26:06Alie Ward?

  Smallologies 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/ologies to submit your questions, possibly have them read by my hot mouth. Erin Talbert admin Zeeologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Callie Ardwire 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 editors Jake Chaffee 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.

• 1:26:48Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:27:30Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:28:04Alie Ward?

  That does feel like burning gasoline.

• 1:28:09Alie Ward?

  Bees?

• 1:28:11Alie Ward?

  It tastes like bees? In my mouth? Or wasps? More accurately? Ugh! I don't like it.

• 1:28:21Alie Ward?

  But I'm alive. My throat does feel like it's closing a little bit.

• 1:28:28Alie Ward?

  I don't have asthma. I'm gonna take a sip of... Huh! Wow! It gets a little worse. Okay. I'm gonna take, um, oh my gosh.

• 1:28:44Alie Ward?

  I would say it's about, um, a third of like what a migraine is. I can feel my face flushing. A lot. And my heart is going up.

• 1:28:58Alie Ward?

  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? Faucesse. Ow!

• 1:29:21Alie Ward?

  This does get worse. Fuck! Unpleasant. It's a, it's a sharp, small pain. If that makes sense. It feels like a bunch of needles.

• 1:29:34Alie Ward?

  This sucks! I'm gonna try the whipped cream.

• 1:29:39Alie Ward?

  Whipped cream not helping.

• 1:29:44Alie Ward?

  I know that they say water only spreads the oils around, but it, um, the ice is numbing my tongue a little. At this point, we know it's hot as fuck.

• 1:29:55Alie Ward?

  I think it's the hottest thing I've ever eaten.

• 1:29:59Alie Ward?

  It definitely feels like punishment.

• 1:30:08Alie Ward?

  Like, once I took too much Viveance 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 mic, which is disgusting. I'm sorry. Okay, well, this sucks,

• 1:30:47Alie Ward?

  but I'm alive. I'm gonna be fine. Like, 15 minutes from now, I'm gonna be fine. And I'm proud of myself. Bruh. I had to hop 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.

• 1:31:09Alie Ward?

  Like,

• 1:31:12Alie Ward?

  imagine if someone punched you in the stomach.

• 1:31:16Alie Ward?

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

• 1:31:30Alie Ward?

  Brr-bye.

• 1:31:52Speaker 05

  Insurance may all seem the same on the surface, but having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like getting a granola bar with a candle in it when you wanted a three-layer birthday cake. You wouldn't settle for just any dessert on your birthday. So don't settle for just any insurance. When it comes to getting the help you need, State Farm is the real deal. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.