Chapter 1: You crave poison

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Right now, your body is filled with cravings. And I don't mean like, "Oh, I could go for a snack." I'm talking cravings that your body, according to

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all common sense, should reject, but want anyway. You crave poison, rot, fire, and you'll pay an absurd amount of money for these cravings like an idiot.

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So, we're going back, way back. You're going to invent every one of these cravings yourself and discover why your ancient instincts still control your

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modern life. Let's start with the most exploitable craving of them all. It's 6,000 BC, somewhere in the hills of what

Chapter 2: Salt

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is now Romania. You live in a farming village where you tend to your goats and cultivate your emmerwheat. It's not much, but it's honest work. Your father

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was a hunter, but you've traded the spear for the sickle, and it was a good trade. The harvest is as good as ever.

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You eat porridge at dawn and flatbread at night. You're not dependent on the game anymore, just the soil, and the soil rewards you. But the soil also

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demands hard work, so you're out at first light swinging the sickle and hauling bundles. By noon, the sweat has dried to a pale crust on your arms. As

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you reach for the next bundle, your leg cramps up. The world wobbles and you have to sit down. You take a break, drink some water, and eat some

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flatbread. You now have a full belly, but you still feel dizzy. Your body is leaking something that bread and water just can't put back. While you sit and

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try to recover, you notice your goats in the distance. They're crowded around something at the edge of the field. You use your last strength to investigate.

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It turns out to be water. A slow dark pool has formed in the ground with a white crust at the edges. It looks

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absolutely disgusting, but the goats are obsessed with it, fighting each other for the best white crust licking spot.

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You look at them with disgust, but then something deep inside of you starts craving it, too. Salt. One of the most

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universal cravings of humans. You look like an absolute fool, and everyone can see it. You are now competing with goats for the best white crust licking spot.

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and you're not winning, but you don't care. You just know your body needs this. Within the hour, the world is stable again and your muscles feel

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relaxed. Thousands of years from now, people will dig up this exact spot and find the oldest salt works anyone's ever found. And no wonder we started making

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it on purpose. This craving is just that strong. I mean, you've already finished the whole bag of chips yourself, and you still want more. That's why corporations

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dump salt into everything today and make billions off of our ancient addiction.

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But salt is special. It's the only craving in this video that your body came up with on its own. The rest you have invented yourself. Starting with a fiery poison. It's 8,000 years ago.

Chapter 3: Spicy

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Somewhere in the highlands of what is now Mexico. You've been foraging since dawn, and you're heading back with almost nothing. You're such a disappointment. You can already hear your siblings laughing at you. Oh, wait.

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That's not your siblings laughter. It sounds like birds. You follow the laughter and as you get closer, you find them in a loaded bush with little red

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berries. The birds are fighting over the berries and every forager knows the rule. Unfortunately, the birds are not mammals and this rule is complete

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nonsense. It tastes a little sweet and you can't help to let out a big smile.

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You're going home with a prize this time. Then it hits you. Your whole mouth ignites. Your tongue, your gums, the roof of your mouth. Everything is on

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fire. Your eyes flood with tears and saliva pours in from the back of your throat like a volcano. You quickly spit it out and scrape your tongue with your

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hands. This is it. You're going to die here. Your siblings were right. They always said you'd mess this up. You wait for the blisters, the blood, whatever

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comes after something burns you that badly.

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But nothing happens. And eventually the fire fades on its own. You inspect your mouth as good as you can, but you find no wound or no swelling. And then

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something even more strange happens. As the heat dies down, you feel good. Your heart's still pounding, but it isn't fear anymore. There's a warmth running

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through you, a lightness, like you just survived something, even though nothing actually happened. You look back at the bush. The birds are still tearing

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through it, completely unbothered, eating the exact same berries that just tried to kill you. One's fallen to the ground beside you. And something in you

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wants to eat it again. Not because you're still hungry, but because you kind of like that fire in your mouth.

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Back at camp, you hand out some of the berries to your siblings. You don't warn them, just tell them to eat. Your brother starts chewing and almost instantly he's head down into a water

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stream. None of you know that water only makes things worse. He'll never touch a berry again. Your sister, who's crying and fanning her mouth, looks like she

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wants to kill you behind the tears. But when the burn fades, she asks for another berry. You have probably guessed it by now, but that berry is a chili,

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which technically is a berry, and it's carrying a chemical whose entire job is to make sure you never eat it again.

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Chili contains capsain, which evolved as an irritant to stop mammals from chewing and destroying plant seeds. But birds aren't mammals. They don't have the

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receptor that capsin [music] hits. So, to them, it's just food. And since they don't chew, the seeds pass right through them, ready to sprout somewhere new.

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Exactly what the plant wanted all along. [music] But you don't know any of this.

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You just know you found some berries that taste like fire. 1,000 years later, you start cultivating this plant right here in Mexico. For the next several

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thousand years, it stays in the Americas. Then in 1492, a lost sailor tastes one, mistakes it for black pepper, and carries it back to Spain as

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a garden ornament. From there, it goes everywhere. And by 2030, the global hot sauce market is projected to be worth $5 billion.

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It's 9,000 years ago on the east coast of what is now Sweden. You live off fish and this summer the ocean's been good to

Chapter 4: Fermented

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you, a little too good. You have more fish than you can eat, so you bury the rest in a pit by the shore. A few months go by and you've forgotten all about

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that fish you hid until your stomach reminds you. So, you go back to the pit and dig it up. You wish you hadn't. The

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smell hits you like a slap. You gag and realize you can't eat this. This is spoiled and will kill you. Your nose and stomach fights a battle for a while, but

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the stomach wins. It's either this or nothing. So, you close your eyes and you eat. And you don't die. It doesn't even

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taste that bad once you get used to the smell. Thanks to your forgetfulness, you and your family survive the bad times.

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And the next time you fish, you bury some fish on purpose. Now, what you don't know is that this fish wasn't rotting. It was fermenting. While it sat

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in that pit, tiny microbes got there first, eating the fish before you could.

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And as they ate, their waste did two things. It preserved the meat, and it killed off the stuff that would actually make you sick. That smell your body

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screamed at was the exact smell of the thing keeping you alive. Eventually, someone dug up this exact spot and found the oldest evidence of fermented fish

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anywhere on Earth. Today, we do this on purpose. We just gave it fancy names like sourdough or blue cheese. In Sweden, they still ferment herring until the can bulges, then eat it on purpose.

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The smell is extremely foul, and you'll gag if you open a can and take a whiff.

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It's a special taste for sure, and no wonder it took humans 9,000 years to acquire it. You taught yourself to crave rot. Next, you'll teach yourself to

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crave a drug. It's 2,000 years ago in ancient China. You've been awake since before sunrise, and you're exhausted.

Chapter 5: Caffeine

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Every human before you has just had to endure this. When you're tired, you're tired. That's the end of it. Until tonight, you're boiling water, and a few leaves drift in from a nearby bush.

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You're too tired to fish them out, so you drink it anyway. And the fog lifts.

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The heaviness behind your eyes pulls back. You feel awake in a way you didn't think was possible. But a few hours later, the fog rolls back in. And now

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it's heavier than before. So you make another cup. And the next morning, you don't wake up sharp. You wake up normal, but only after you drink it. The thing

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that gave you power now owns the first hour of your day. That leaf was from the chameleioensencis, the tea plant, and it didn't give you energy in the sense of

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calories to burn. Instead, it just mutes the signal from a molecule called adenosine in your brain. That molecule tells your brain you're tired, but since you drank caffeine, you can't hear it.

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But when the caffeine wears off, all that adenosine that's been piling up floods in at once, and you crash, you do this every single morning now. Coffee,

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tea, energy drinks. Caffeine is the most widely used drug on the planet. Billions of people can't start their day without it. And most of them will call it a

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personality trait. If addiction was a personality trait, sure. So, you taught yourself to crave poison, rot, and now a

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drug. But this next one isn't a craving you picked up. It is something that made humans level up. It's 1.8 million years

Chapter 6: Cooked Food

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ago, somewhere in East Africa. You're sitting in the dirt gnawing on a strip of raw antelope. It's tough. It's stringy. You've been chewing the same

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piece for 10 minutes and your jaw is already tired. But for you, this is just how normal eating works. [music] You spend half your day chewing, and that's

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why you look the way you do. You have big teeth, big jaw, and gut like a furnace just to break down what you swallow. Night comes around and you're

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still chewing. Something bright flashes in front of your eyes, and suddenly your world's in chaos. You hide until it calms down, and then eventually your

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curiosity takes the better of you. In the aftermath, you find what looks like the remains of some kind of [music] animal. And for some reason, it smells

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good. Better than anything you've ever smelled before. Your mouth is watering, and before you know it, the black piece is in your mouth. And it's the best

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thing you've ever tasted. You eat until you can't. The difference between eating raw food and cooked food is immense.

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[music] The raw food fights back. The energy is locked inside cells, and your body has to fight to access it. [music]

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You spend almost as much energy eating it as you get out of it. But cooked food on the other hand, while the fire has done the chewing for you, heat breaks

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the food apart before it ever reaches your mouth, unfolding proteins, bursting cells, turning food into something your body can drain for almost free. So, you

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started spending less energy eating and getting more out of every bite. Your gut could shrink, your teeth could shrink,

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your jaw could shrink, and all that leftover energy went somewhere expensive. somewhere that had been waiting for a fuel source big enough to afford it.

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Your brain, you didn't just learn to cook. You evolved to need it. Which brings you back here to the same kitchen and the

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same cabinet. You still crave salt because your body is leaking it. You eat rotting stuff because it kept you alive.

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And you chug a drug every day because you're probably addicted. And you cook your steak on electric fire because you have a recessed maxilla and a brain that

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can do math. You didn't invent these cravings. You inherited them.