A few months ago, Ed Curry found himself lying down in the pouring rain in a state of agony.

His heart was beating fast, his arms were numb, and his mouth felt like it was on fire.

The heat pain lasted for about two hours, and then the cramps set in, and that lasted for about

four more, to the point where it just couldn't even move the cramps hurt so bad.

Curry had brought this suffering upon himself. He had just tasted the fruit of his own labor,

a hybrid chili pepper grown on his farm in South Carolina.

It's about the size of a golf ball. It's covered in bumps and spikes. And it just looks like

an apple that has gone through a Frankenstein. The oil gives it kind of a yellowish flemy tinge, and it's just

a brutal pepper. It's ugly. This little nugget of pure torture is called Pepper X. It's up to

a thousand times hotter than a jalapeno, and its kick is more powerful than most brands

of police-grade pepper spray.

It recently set a Guinness World record for the hottest chili pepper ever measured in a lab.

For Curry, Pepper X is the culmination of more than 20 years of crossbreeding.

Peppers aren't just his hobby.

They're his livelihood.

And the hotter they are, the better for

business. By making things hotter, we can produce products that are in your grocery store

right now at a cheaper cost. It's about economies of scale.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crackett.

Today, the world's hottest peppers.

Before Ed Curry was growing hot peppers, he was on a path to self-destruction.

I was a big, fat, sloppy, drunk pig. I was a big fat, sloppy drunk pig, and I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day,

...