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For thousands of years, humans in the Americas have cultivated an extremely hot plant. When it was transferred to the Old World, it transformed cuisines, inspired scientific measurements, and made some meals much, much, much hotter. Its story stretches from the ancient Americas to kitchens on almost every continent today. Learn more about the surprisingly hot history of peppers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Square. There's a local cafe I visit where paying is almost effortless. They use Square, and whether I'm tapping a card or leaving a tip, the whole process takes just a few seconds. That smooth checkout means the staff can spend less time wrestling with technology and more time dealing with customers. That's what Square does for businesses. It brings payments, point of sale, inventory, staffing and online sales together in one system. Its AI powered tools can handle routine tasks, while real insights help owners make smarter decisions. Square can work for someone opening their first location or a business expanding into several With Free plus and premium plans, transparent pricing, and no long term contracts, Square helps you run your business more smoothly, bringing payments, operations and insights together in one place so you're ready for whatever next. Right now, listeners can get up to $200 off square hardware when you sign up at square.com godaily that's sq U-A-R-E.com godaily get started with Square and build a setup that works the way you do. This episode is sponsored by Babbel. As longtime listeners know, I've spent over a decade traveling around the world and have visited most of the countries on earth. As such, I know firsthand the power of learning at least a few words and phrases in the language of any country you might be visiting. I picked up a bit wherever I've been to, but it's always been a challenge if you haven't learned anything beforehand. And that's why I've started using Babbel. I've begun working on two languages that I've always been the weakest at, French and German. Babbel is built for real life, not vocabulary lists or verb charts, but real conversation. Practice lessons are quick, practical and built by more than 200 language experts, not AI. Babbel's award winning app has sold over 25 million subscriptions and is backed by a 14 day money back guarantee. If you've got summer travel coming up, now is the time to start so you can actually use what you learn on the trip. Right now Babbel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to Babbel.com daily. That's Babbel B-A-B-B-E-L.com daily for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions may apply. Before we get too far into peppers, we have to clarify exactly what we're talking about, because the word pepper applies to several different types of plants. The word pepper originally applied to spices such as black pepper or long pepper. Likewise, Sichuan peppers from China are another wholly unrelated plant that carries the same name. All of these plants are not related to the subject of this episode. The topic of this episode will be capsicum peppers, or members of the genus Capsicum, and what all these plants mostly have in common is the production of a chemical known as capsaicin. True, capsicum peppers are members of the nightshade family Solaniceae, making them relatives of tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, tobacco, and petunias. Botanically, the fruit of a pepper plant is actually a berry, although nobody would ever really call it as such. The genus Capsicum is entirely native to the Americas, with its natural range extending from Mexico through Central America and the Caribbean into much of tropical South America. When Europeans first arrived, the only real thing they had to compare these hot, spicy plants to was black pepper. So they dubbed them peppers and the name stuck. The American origins of pepper plants are surprising to many people, given how important they have become in cuisines across India after Africa, Thailand, and parts of China. Yet all of these places adopted peppers only after they were brought back across the Atlantic and spread through trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Another important distinction to make note of is that between chilies and peppers, pepper is the broader classification that applies to all capsicum plants. The term chile usually refers to the category of hot pepper plants that produce capsaicin. Non chili peppers are usually referred to as bell peppers. Bell peppers have essentially no capsaicin. They carry a genetic mutation that prevents them from producing any meaningful amount of it. And interestingly, bell peppers aren't really a fundamentally different type of plant. They're essentially non spicy chili peppers that have been selectively bred for large, sweet fruits. Green, yellow, orange and red bell peppers are usually just different varieties or stages of ripeness, with red peppers generally being sweeter because they've been allowed to mature longer. Interestingly, breeders have done the same thing with normally hot pepper types. New Mexico State University has, for example, developed habanero type peppers that retain the characteristic habanero aroma while producing little or no heat. Wild capsicum plants probably originated in tropical South America and then diversified through Central and South America over millions of years. Humans encountered these plants thousands of years ago and independently domesticated Several different species in different parts of the Americas. The most important domesticated species today is probably Capsicum annuum. Despite the name Annuum meaning annual, the plant can actually live for several years in tropical climates. Genetic, archaeological, linguistic, and ecological evidence indicates that its principal domestication took place in Mexico, probably somewhere in the central, eastern, or northeastern part of the country. Humans had been using wild peppers long before the fully domesticated varieties appeared. Domestication gradually transformed small wild fruits into the extraordinary range of forms that we see today, from tiny chiltepins to enormous bell peppers. However, there was no single pepper domestication event. At least five species of Capsicum were independently domesticated in the Americas. That distinction is important because what we call different kinds of peppers today can mean two very different things. A jalapeno pepper and a bell pepper are just different varieties of the exact same Capsicum annuum species, while habanero peppers belong to a completely different Capsicum Chineseae species. Capsicum Chinese includes many of the world's hottest peppers, which I'll be getting to in a bit, but the scientific name is misleading. Chineseae means Chinese, but the species did not originate in China. The name resulted from an 18th century taxonomic mistake when European botanists encountered peppers that had already spread throughout Asia and assumed that they just originated there. Perhaps the most striking thing about the history of peppers is how rapidly they conquered the world. Before the year 1500, no one in Europe, Africa, or Asia had ever encountered a capsicum pepper. Spanish and especially Portuguese trading networks carried capsicum seeds across the Atlantic and Indian oceans during the 16th century. Peppers had several advantages. As a global crop, they grew easily in tropical and subtropical climates, produced large quantities of fruit, could be grown locally rather than imported from Asia, such as with black pepper, and they dried extremely well. Within remarkably little time, peppers had reached Africa, India, Southeast Asia, China, Korea, and Japan. India adopted chili peppers particularly enthusiastically. Prior to their arrival, Indians already had several ways of producing pungency in their dishes, including black pepper, long pepper, ginger, and mustard. Capsicum peppers provided an inexpensive, easily cultivated source of intense heat. They eventually became so important to Indian cuisine that it's difficult to even imagine many regional Indian dishes without them, despite their historically relatively recent arrival. Although Europeans introduced peppers to the Old World, hot peppers never really caught on in European cuisine in the same way it did in Asia and Africa. One question that many people have asked is why hot, spicy cuisines are more prominent in warm latitudes. There is a real connection between hot climates and the use of strongly spiced foods, but there probably isn't a single explanation. The strongest hypothesis concerns food preservation and microbes. Before refrigeration, food spoiled much more rapidly in warm climates because bacteria and fungi reproduce faster at higher temperatures. Many traditional spices contain compounds that inhibit microorganisms. Researchers Paul Sherman and Jennifer Billing compared traditional recipes from dozens of countries and found that cuisines from hotter climates tended to use more spices, particularly spices with strong antimicrobial properties. They argued that the use of spices may have provided an advantage by reducing foodborne illnesses. Chili peppers fit perfectly into this pattern. Capsaicin has antimicrobial properties, although chili is only one of many antimicrobial ingredients. Garlic, onion, oregano, cloves, and other spices can also inhibit various microorganisms. Traditional cuisines often combine many of these ingredients. The correlation between temperature and spice was particularly noticeable in meat dishes, which would have prevented a serious spoilage problem in tropical climates before refrigeration. And there's also the fact that chili peppers just grow better in tropical climates. Chili peppers are hot, but that isn't binary. Some are hotter than others, and some are really, really hotter than others. The sense of taste isn't something that is easily quantifiable. We can quantify light and sound, but taste doesn't really lend itself to numbers. In 1912, a pharmacist by the name of Wilbur Scoville attempted to solve this problem, at least for measuring heat in food. He developed the Scoville Organoleptic Test. Organoleptic is just a fancy word that refers to the qualities of a food substance that stimulate sense organs. A measured pepper extract was repeatedly diluted traditionally with a sweetened solution and presented to human testers. Dilution continued until tasters could no longer detect the burning sensation. The amount of dilution necessary became the pepper's Scoville rating. If an extract had to be diluted approximately 5,000 fold before its heat could no longer be detected, it would be assigned roughly 5,000 Scoville heat units, or SHU. The system worked remarkably well for its time, but it had an obvious weakness. Human beings were the measuring instruments. People have different sensitivities to capsaicin. Repeated tasting also causes sensory fatigue. Someone who just tasted an extremely hot sample may judge the next one differently from someone starting fresh. Modern laboratories usually do not assemble panels of people and make them repeatedly drink pepper extract instead. Pepper heat is generally measured chemically using high Performance Liquid chromatography, or hplc. A pepper sample is dried and ground, its capsaicinoids are extracted, and the chromatography equipment separates and measures the different heat producing molecules. The resulting concentration can then be mathematically converted into the familiar Scoville heat unit scale. A commonly used rough conversion is that 1 part per million of capsaicinoids corresponds to approximately 16 SHU on a dry weight basis. Over time, as with all cultivated plants that humans use, peppers have been bred for certain properties, particularly capsaicin. The range of heat levels in these peppers can vary greatly greatly. At the bottom of the scale are bell peppers which typically have an Shu value of 0. Mild Anaheim and New Mexico peppers may range from roughly 500 to several thousand Shu. Jalapenos typically range from 2500 to 8000 Shu, Serranos are usually somewhere around 10,000 to 25,000 Shu, Cayenne peppers commonly reach approximately 3. 30 to 50,000 Shu and many Thai chilies and Birds eye peppers occupy the roughly 50,000 to 100,000 Shu range. Habaneros and Scotch bonnets commonly reach roughly 100,000 to 350,000 Shu, although hotter versions can exceed those considerably. Several decades ago a quest began to find and create hotter and hotter peppers. There is a niche market for hot sauces featuring many ultra hot peppers as some people want hotter and hotter experiences. In 2007 the Guinness World Records listed ghost peppers as the world's hottest pepper. It has an SHU between 855,000 and 1,040,000. The ghost pepper is native to northern India and is believed to have been a natural hybrid. However, since then a series of record breaking peppers has been the result of intentional selective breeding. In 2011 three different peppers set records for being the hottest. In February the Infinity Chili set a record at 1,067,286 SHU and a few days later the Naga Viper was recorded at 1,382,000 Shu. And in June the the Butch Tea strain of the Trinidad Scorpion pepper came in at 1.4 million SHU. In 2013 the title was taken by Ed Currie of South Carolina who developed a new pepper called the Carolina Reaper. The Carolina Reaper was originally measured at approximately 1,569,000 Shu but has later been updated to 1.64 million. Shuffle. The current record holder as of the time of this recording is another pepper developed by Ed Curie known as pepper X. In 2023 it had a measured value of 2.6 million SHU. The increase in pepper hotness over the 16 year period from 2007 to 2023 was astonishing. In 2007 the record was a bit over 1 million SHU and by 2023 it was nearly 2.7 million SHU, indicating that selective breeding increased the recognized record by roughly 169%, and the trend isn't over. Ed Currie has announced that he has created a pepper even hotter than pepperx. In a 2025 interview, he said the new variety was essentially ready, but that he wanted extensive testing and was expected to wait a few years before releasing it. How hot could a pepper theoretically get? Pure capsaicin corresponds to roughly 16 million SHU. A pepper will probably never achieve that, but there's still a lot of room for still hotter peppers than the current record. Whatever Ed Curry's new pepper is might break the 3 million SHU barrier. The global market for capsicum peppers is enormous, although estimates vary depending on whether the calculation only includes fresh peppers or also dried chilies, powder, sauces, extract and processed foods. For the broadest definition of the capsicum market, one 2026 industry estimate values it at roughly $77 billion worldwide, up from $73 billion in 2025. It projects the market could exceed $120 billion by 2034. The Asia Pacific region accounts for more than half of global revenue, reflecting both the enormous production and consumption in countries such as China and India. Peppers are not a staple food like wheat, potatoes or rice, but they have had a profound impact. Even though they were native to the Americas, they have come to define entire cuisines across multiple regions of the world. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible, and I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.