February 14, 2011 • 21 mins
The first image of a kiss dates back to ancient India -- but where did the concept of kissing originate? More importantly, why do we do it today? Tune in as Molly and Cristen recount the history of kissing and the science behind smooching.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From House top Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristin, and this
(00:20):
podcast that we were doing right now Kristen is going
to be available for downloading on our producer Jerry's Birthday
a k a. Valentine's Day. Yes, I referred to it
as Jerry Day, right, I think most people who work
here do, right, But when we were looking at the countar,
we were like, oh, man, the rest of the world,
who doesn't know Jerry. Unfortunately, we'll probably think it's a
(00:40):
Valentine's Day episode. So we decided to do something in
the in the realm of love kissing, And I have
to say I'm probably the luckiest person in the world
because before we started recording Kristen, Kristin serenaded me with
a kiss is just a kid. You're trying to get
me to sing, Molly, and it's not gonna happen. No,
(01:01):
I'm just for living a happy memory. Okay. I mean
that's sort of how podcasts start. I try and get
Chrismen to save me a song and then I'm ready
to record. Yeah, that's what I need. Just see. You know,
I'm just warming up my pipes the old podcast, and
well you warmed up your pipes. We've warmed up our
brains with this research. What did we find out about kissing?
Where did the kiss come from? Where did the kids
(01:22):
come from? That's a tyfficult question to answer, but I
can tell you this. There are all sorts of kisses,
true hershey's her, she's kisses, you know. Ye that we
think of kisses is the kiss on the lips, a
romantic kiss, maybe a kiss on a cheek, a kiss
to greet someone, to kisses say goodbye. But nay, there
(01:44):
are far many more kinds. And uh. This research on
kissing goes back to this guy, Martin von Kemp, who
lived in seventeenth century, and he wrote the Opus polyhistoric
Um day oscars and which he listed more than twenty
different types of kisses, including a kiss of veneration, a
(02:05):
kiss of peace, kissing of the pope's foot, kissing bestowed
by superiors on inferiors, kissing used in academic degree ceremonies,
kisses exchanged by couples seiling their marriage vowels, a kiss
of reconciliation. And it kind of makes sense that this
German guy was so obsessed with kissing because in the
German language, I think there are more than uh like
(02:28):
fifteen different words to describe different kinds of kisses, one
of which is meant to um. It translates to a
kiss to make up for kisses that were not previously given.
That's the sweetest ste finish never yeah, I mean apparently Germans,
are you know, kissing kissing? Crazy? Yeah, and bond camp.
It took a thousand pages, more than a thousand pages
(02:50):
to outline all these types of kisses, although it is
kind of a dull, dull title for a book about
such a splendid thing. Yes, and in cych an ancient
and cyclop pedia of kissing. And but that was not
the first time. Obviously, by the seventeenth century people had
seen a picture of a kiss. Before the first picture
of a kiss comes to us from India. It's the
(03:12):
first recorded image of a kiss, so that's why some
people think that's where where it all originated. And then
when the people came through India, like Alexander the Gray
and then kept moving westward, they took the kiss with them. Right.
The that first image that you're talking about was tracked
down by an anthropologist at Texas A and and M University
named Vaughn Bryant, and it goes back to around b
(03:35):
C where he says that scriptures started to mention people
sniffing with their mouths, and then later texts describes lovers
quote setting mouth to mouth. So perhaps kissing in the
in the sense of an erotic kiss, a sexual kiss
originated in India. Perhaps you know What's what's kind of
(03:56):
funny is despite the fact that we've got let's say,
a thousand page and cyclope on kissing, we're still not
going to have a definitive answer on why we kiss,
right Because while I think it's around ninety percent of
human cultures are known to kiss from lip to lip,
to practice slip on lip kissing for purposes of love,
(04:16):
for purposes of love, it is not universal. And Darwin
even points this out that even in cultures that that
might not do a lip to lip kiss, there's either
some kind of cheek on cheek rubbing or maybe nose
to nose kissing. We all have amnesian cultures practice we
all get up in each other's faces. We do, and
different um animal species will do this. Birds will touch beaks,
(04:39):
snails will rub their antennas. So that gets into why
would we want to be so close to another person's face, because,
let's face, that can get a little awkward every now
and then, yeah, halitosis, hello, And so why do we
need to do this? Why is this sort of a
common ritual in in falling in love? And this gets
(05:00):
into some of the theories as to how kissing evolved.
One theory goes that, uh, you know, like think of
a bird who choose for the food. The bubble bird
chooses to choose the food up for the baby birds
and then puts it in their mouth. There's some thinking
that kissing kind of evolved from that, yes, pre mastication,
that mothers used to chew up the food for the
(05:21):
baby and then as if enough mother and you know,
Freud had a field day with this kind of stuff
because Freud also said that, you know, maybe your mother
didn't show up your food free, but she might have
breastfed you. And the thinking goes that, you know, when
we're infant, we have this really secure feeling of being
close using our mouth to get comfort and sustenance from
(05:43):
our mother's and the kissing our loved ones is a
way to recapture that emotion, so to two theories of
your mother feeding you going into why you might like
to kiss your significant other. But today a lot of
people are breastfed, and yet we're still it seemed to
be kissing just fine. It's true. Well let's talk about
I think another theory that's kind of interesting is that
we're trying to suss out something about our potential mate. Yeah.
(06:07):
In two thousand nine at the Association for the Advancement
of Scientists, a lot of researchers came out with these
new findings about uh philomatology or the science of kissing,
and they were saying that it's all about the saliva.
Yeah yeah, I mean, like a big old slobbery kid,
(06:32):
is what it boils down to. Because supposedly guys like
more more I don't know, mushi's uh, they said, wet kisses,
what kisses? Thank you? Guys like what are kisses? Because supposedly, uh,
they're they're trying to what kind of inject tessacterone into
(06:52):
the girls now to sexually arouse her, saying that one
of the things that passes back and forth when you're
swapping spit is testosterone, and since guys have more of it,
and because testosterone increases sex drive, these researchers are saying that,
of course a guy would want to get all slabbery
on you. He's trying to increase your sex drive via
(07:13):
his saliva. But you know, while that sounds frankly pretty creepy,
there are some other things, other good hormones being traded
back and forth in the kissing process. Yeah, they've measured
the levels of cortisol and oxytocin in people's brains before
and after making out, and cortisol, which is a stress
(07:34):
related to hormone, tends to go woid down if you
have a good makeout sish, relaxes you, chills you out,
and then unless it's gross, unless the guys trying to
shove too much testosterone in your mouth. But perhaps I'm
only saying that because women tend to analyze kisses from
a man far more uh with with a far more
(07:57):
scrutiny than guys do. Write we will judge a man
on his teeth, on his breath, all of the stuff,
whereas dudes are just like they see it as a
means to an end. One article that and we all
know what that but I think that makes sense. And
of course, as as you might expect her on stuff
now never told you, there is, you know, perhaps an
(08:19):
evolutionarily evolutionary reason as to why we analyze kisses morn
and of course it's babies. The thinking goes that if we,
you know, get that that burst of testosterone, we have
sex with the fella and we end up pregnant. Oh man,
you're stuck there with the kid for the rest of
your life. Which is why when you have this chance
just to judge the person on on the kissing style,
(08:43):
that's why women tend to read more into it well.
And and then also brings up oxytocin, the hormone that
I am that didn't talk about earlier that goes along
with cortisol. Researchers think that that oxytocin, which is a
bonding hormone that is often released in male and female
organ awesomes, goes up when you when you kiss someone,
(09:04):
but not as much as uh cortisol goes down. Basically,
it's more of a stress reliever than a really intense
bonding thing. Because you know it, really you can kiss
someone and walk away and not be a big deal. Right, Yeah,
we don't need researchers to tell us that kissing really
of stress. Yes, unless again less that's true. But one
(09:27):
thing I liked, this little fun fact about kissing. One
thing that does make it easier for us to kiss,
uh and not um say, bump heads. Not make it
so awkward, you know, like you've seem like comedic scenes
where couples are like going in and don't know how
to approach to those fools. But two thirds of adults
(09:49):
tend to tilt their head just automatically tilt their head
to the right when they go in for a kiss.
So it's kind of complimentary. You're coming at each other
from the same to action her chance of meeting. Yeah,
and this was research done by this German guy who
basically German. Yeah, Germans love kissing. What is it? Because
(10:11):
we talked about French kissing all the time, like it's
the you know, the knees. But maybe we should maybe
we should do us some German kissing instead. All right,
tell us more about what this resarctor found real quick,
and then I want to talk about French kissing right well,
in order to he was he wasn't so much interested
in kissing but in the head motor bias. Basically, how
(10:32):
we um, you know someone's right handed, They're often right
footed and will use rely on their right eye more often.
So you wanted to know if maybe the head tilt
of kissing followed in suit because the majority of people
are right handed. And for two and a half years
he hit out in the airports and watch people kiss,
(10:53):
and it took him that long to get a large
enough sample size to where he could conclude that, yes,
two thirds of us tilt to the right. Now I'm
a South Paul, though, Molly, you know, I don't know.
I haven't really taken a you know, my own sample. Um,
but as I sit here and I tilt my head
to the left, it feels a lot more natural than
(11:15):
tilting to the right. So yeah, I was probably gonna
make my next kissing encounter all the more awkward. I
was telling Kristen, I think this might be the first
subject where I'm really worried about overthinking something after I've
done all this research on it, because you know, as
soon as that head tilt starts gonna be like oh
I've fit into that that demographic. Yeah, you're gonna just
like switch to the left, just a break, break the mold,
(11:37):
Molly A right. And as you might imagine, that researcher
did admit that it was probably the creepiest research he
ever done, and that people would see him and just
kind of give him a look, and that that's some
dedication to your work to put up with all of that.
All right, I said, I want to talk about French kissing,
So let's talk about how this got its name. Yeah,
French kissing basically started because rumor broke out in your
(12:00):
of that probably probably started by the Germans. Probably started
by the Germans that if you wanted a good old snog,
you needed you need to find a French gill because
they were very um open with their kissing. They were
you know, they just you know, they kiss everyone. That
was sort of the thing is you could just walk
down the street and you see a French girl and
be like, WHOA, let's kiss. And so it wasn't that
(12:21):
they were necessarily known for this open mouth style. You know,
it's not like the French invent at the tongue. They
just got from the French. The tongue, new finding. They
just they're very forthcoming with their kisses. And so that's
how French kissing got this. Uh this you know, high status,
(12:41):
I guess. But you know what's funny as in India
they call it English kissing, right, which is interesting because
that first image of kissing from comes from India. So
what we be doing me kissing? Yeah, what's going on?
But our word, our English word kiss comes from you
guessed it the German word cuissan and I'm sure I'm mispronouncing.
(13:05):
It's k u s s j A n. Probably because
of the sound that it makes, and her she's kissed
got its name because of the sound it makes as
it comes out though, like chocolate squarter. Yeah, okay, right,
this was I think my favorite fun fact that came
out of researching this question, and that the average person
spends three six hours kissing of their lots. Three six hours.
(13:30):
It's a lot of kissing. You have some meeds and schapstick,
but your stress will be so low, Your stress will
be so low, and you're gonna feel great afterwards because
in addition to your stress of her most decreasing dopamine
and serotonin. Of course, shoot right on up in the brain,
giving you a little little brain reward. I mean, thanks
(13:52):
for all that, thanks for not making out. Let's talk
about um one iconic kiss, because I thought this was
really interesting. We found this New York Times article about how,
uh that famous kiss taken in Time Square of a
nurse and a sailor when the war ended, this you know,
just grabbed woman in a fit of happiness and joy
(14:15):
that the war was over, planted a big one honor.
And um, there's all this article about how so many
people have come forward saying that they were the person
in that photograph because you know, it's just so iconic
that you know, why wouldn't you want to be associated
with such a romantic moment? And uh, you know they've
got the guy pretty well established that this guy, and
(14:35):
the photographer thinks that he's found the woman that he
captured because when he took the picture, he didn't write
down their names. You know, he didn't know what he had.
And uh, the guy who's thought to be like the
guy in the picture doesn't believe that the girl is
the one he kissed. Yeah. The photograph, which I will
say is Time Life's most requested and reproduced image, was
taken by Alfred Eisenstatt, and he thinks that the photograph
(15:01):
is of Glenn McDuffie, who is about eighty years old
and lives in Houston. And but at least eleven other men,
according to The The New York Times, have stepped up to
claim that they're actually the dude in the picture. And
while several women have also said that they're the lucky
lady and smooched um, one of them, Edith Shane, seems
(15:23):
to have the strongest claim because the she contacted Eisenstead,
who flew out to California, photographed her and declared that
he believed that she was the one who got the kiss. Yeah,
but that guy does I think that's who he kissed.
I know the woman she kissed, and she ain't it.
That's a quote, that's all right, Glenn McDuffie. But apparently,
(15:43):
you know, the whole way Eisensat got the pictures, he
was following some some sailor just down the street, and
the sailor was just kissing everyone, and he just happened
to get this one picture. So I don't know if
I trust this guy to know everyone he kissed that day.
I don't know. You know, maybe maybe Glenn McDuffie has
a like a photographic memory for kissing everyone lips knows everyone.
(16:06):
He spread his testosterone too. Not only before we wrap
up this epic kissing episode, we need to bust one myth.
We got one kissing myth to bus alright, to a
myth to kiss off, feel stop stop the Eskimo kiss. Okay, Well,
(16:27):
there was this this theory the Eskimos can't kiss on
the lips because their mouths would freeze together. Tends to
be cold where Eskimos live. Hence we an eskimo kisses
when you rub noses right right, And this myth was
very firmly established by nineteen twenty movie Nanoke of the North,
and you know he, you know, the filmmaker basically assumed
(16:50):
that this is what they were doing to express emotion,
to kiss. But it just turned out that the mother
that um Robert Jay Flatterty, the a filmmaker filmed. He
filmed a woman just nuzzling her baby, and the woman
was giving her baby a canoope, which is an expression
of affection inanimate culture. And basically you just just pressed
(17:12):
the sides of your nose against the cheeks of your
baby and breathe and their scent, and who would want
to do that because baby smells so good. Yeah, but
it's never a romantic gesture. So kisses not fromantic, right,
but in Polynesian culture, so we do know that that
they do tend to to bonk noses. And you know,
part of the reason why no one knows exactly why
we kiss is that some cultures don't want to reb lips,
(17:34):
They just want to like touch some face, right, And
a lot of Asian and African cultures kissing on the
lips like we do, especially making out French style of
German style. Maybe we should start saying is totally foreign
and kind of gross. Yeah. There was actually uh talk
that was given at the Kansie Institute about this couple
that had marital difficulties basically cause they were from two
(17:54):
different cultures and couldn't reconcile their kissing style enough to
get it together in the bedroom. Um so um. It's
kind of a sad note to end on for a
Valentine's Day episode Kisses, but on a happy note for
those of us who do like kissing, it delivers quite
a reward of stress decreasing dopamine and siratoin and increasing,
(18:17):
and it also causes our pupils to dilate, which is
why we tend to close our eyes while we do it.
So let's our look at kissing and um. We hope
everyone out there has a happy Valentine's Day and a
happy Jerry's birthday. Yes, and most more importantly a happy
Jerry's birthday. On that note, if you want to send
us a Valentine or emails moms of it how stuff
works dot Com. Let's read a couple of emails from there.
(18:43):
So I have an email here from Bristita. It's about
the eyebrow episode, and Mercita shapes eyebrows for a living.
She is licensed by the state to do so. And
she writes, please please, please make sure when you get
your eyebrows waxed or anything waxed, but the person waxing
you is state licensed by law, their license should be visible.
If not, then I can't guarantee they went through the
proper training, which means it's scary and unsafe. Um. Not
(19:07):
to scaryone, but what if the person before I got
a bikini wax and had herpies and then someone goes
in and gets their eyebrows wax With the same wax,
that person can get hertpies. Oh my god, that person
can get herpies in the eye and can possibly blind
the person. So just be safe. Yes, I always look
for a valid license before putting wax anywhere. It's good
(19:32):
to know where to live by. Well, I've got one
here from Brooke And this is in response to our
episode on objective sexuality, and she writes the aspect of
people marrying objects drudged up bad associations for me of
one of the arguments against gay marriage. If we let
them do it, next thing, you know, people will want
to marry their dogs, which I do think is wrong
(19:53):
for many reasons, one of them being that one of
the parties in that comparison isn't even capable of consent.
But I've thought about my response more. If I put
away the negative feelings I get because of its similarity
to an argument made to deprive people of their rights
and separate merits, separate marriage from its legal meaning, I
can see it in a different light. I do think
(20:14):
that loving a dog would be different because dog isn't
capable of consent. I don't think objects are either, But
I also don't think they can be hurt, so that
becomes entirely irrelevant. I can't relate to feeling any sort
of love or affection for or from an object, but
I can relate to being made to feel wrong in
your own skin for something that's none of anyone else's concerned.
(20:35):
As long as no one's being hurt, then a person
should be allowed to find love wherever and however they can.
Thanks again for the thought provoking episode, and if you
have any thoughts to send our way again. Our email
is Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You
can also head over to Facebook and write stuff on
our wall. We'd love to see you there. In addition,
you can follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts
(20:59):
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(21:19):
Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From House top Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristin, and this
(00:20):
podcast that we were doing right now Kristen is going
to be available for downloading on our producer Jerry's Birthday
a k a. Valentine's Day. Yes, I referred to it
as Jerry Day, right, I think most people who work
here do, right, But when we were looking at the countar,
we were like, oh, man, the rest of the world,
who doesn't know Jerry. Unfortunately, we'll probably think it's a
(00:40):
Valentine's Day episode. So we decided to do something in
the in the realm of love kissing, And I have
to say I'm probably the luckiest person in the world
because before we started recording Kristen, Kristin serenaded me with
a kiss is just a kid. You're trying to get
me to sing, Molly, and it's not gonna happen. No,
(01:01):
I'm just for living a happy memory. Okay. I mean
that's sort of how podcasts start. I try and get
Chrismen to save me a song and then I'm ready
to record. Yeah, that's what I need. Just see. You know,
I'm just warming up my pipes the old podcast, and
well you warmed up your pipes. We've warmed up our
brains with this research. What did we find out about kissing?
Where did the kiss come from? Where did the kids
(01:22):
come from? That's a tyfficult question to answer, but I
can tell you this. There are all sorts of kisses,
true hershey's her, she's kisses, you know. Ye that we
think of kisses is the kiss on the lips, a
romantic kiss, maybe a kiss on a cheek, a kiss
to greet someone, to kisses say goodbye. But nay, there
(01:44):
are far many more kinds. And uh. This research on
kissing goes back to this guy, Martin von Kemp, who
lived in seventeenth century, and he wrote the Opus polyhistoric
Um day oscars and which he listed more than twenty
different types of kisses, including a kiss of veneration, a
(02:05):
kiss of peace, kissing of the pope's foot, kissing bestowed
by superiors on inferiors, kissing used in academic degree ceremonies,
kisses exchanged by couples seiling their marriage vowels, a kiss
of reconciliation. And it kind of makes sense that this
German guy was so obsessed with kissing because in the
German language, I think there are more than uh like
(02:28):
fifteen different words to describe different kinds of kisses, one
of which is meant to um. It translates to a
kiss to make up for kisses that were not previously given.
That's the sweetest ste finish never yeah, I mean apparently Germans,
are you know, kissing kissing? Crazy? Yeah, and bond camp.
It took a thousand pages, more than a thousand pages
(02:50):
to outline all these types of kisses, although it is
kind of a dull, dull title for a book about
such a splendid thing. Yes, and in cych an ancient
and cyclop pedia of kissing. And but that was not
the first time. Obviously, by the seventeenth century people had
seen a picture of a kiss. Before the first picture
of a kiss comes to us from India. It's the
(03:12):
first recorded image of a kiss, so that's why some
people think that's where where it all originated. And then
when the people came through India, like Alexander the Gray
and then kept moving westward, they took the kiss with them. Right.
The that first image that you're talking about was tracked
down by an anthropologist at Texas A and and M University
named Vaughn Bryant, and it goes back to around b
(03:35):
C where he says that scriptures started to mention people
sniffing with their mouths, and then later texts describes lovers
quote setting mouth to mouth. So perhaps kissing in the
in the sense of an erotic kiss, a sexual kiss
originated in India. Perhaps you know What's what's kind of
(03:56):
funny is despite the fact that we've got let's say,
a thousand page and cyclope on kissing, we're still not
going to have a definitive answer on why we kiss,
right Because while I think it's around ninety percent of
human cultures are known to kiss from lip to lip,
to practice slip on lip kissing for purposes of love,
(04:16):
for purposes of love, it is not universal. And Darwin
even points this out that even in cultures that that
might not do a lip to lip kiss, there's either
some kind of cheek on cheek rubbing or maybe nose
to nose kissing. We all have amnesian cultures practice we
all get up in each other's faces. We do, and
different um animal species will do this. Birds will touch beaks,
(04:39):
snails will rub their antennas. So that gets into why
would we want to be so close to another person's face, because,
let's face, that can get a little awkward every now
and then, yeah, halitosis, hello, And so why do we
need to do this? Why is this sort of a
common ritual in in falling in love? And this gets
(05:00):
into some of the theories as to how kissing evolved.
One theory goes that, uh, you know, like think of
a bird who choose for the food. The bubble bird
chooses to choose the food up for the baby birds
and then puts it in their mouth. There's some thinking
that kissing kind of evolved from that, yes, pre mastication,
that mothers used to chew up the food for the
(05:21):
baby and then as if enough mother and you know,
Freud had a field day with this kind of stuff
because Freud also said that, you know, maybe your mother
didn't show up your food free, but she might have
breastfed you. And the thinking goes that, you know, when
we're infant, we have this really secure feeling of being
close using our mouth to get comfort and sustenance from
(05:43):
our mother's and the kissing our loved ones is a
way to recapture that emotion, so to two theories of
your mother feeding you going into why you might like
to kiss your significant other. But today a lot of
people are breastfed, and yet we're still it seemed to
be kissing just fine. It's true. Well let's talk about
I think another theory that's kind of interesting is that
we're trying to suss out something about our potential mate. Yeah.
(06:07):
In two thousand nine at the Association for the Advancement
of Scientists, a lot of researchers came out with these
new findings about uh philomatology or the science of kissing,
and they were saying that it's all about the saliva.
Yeah yeah, I mean, like a big old slobbery kid,
(06:32):
is what it boils down to. Because supposedly guys like
more more I don't know, mushi's uh, they said, wet kisses,
what kisses? Thank you? Guys like what are kisses? Because supposedly, uh,
they're they're trying to what kind of inject tessacterone into
(06:52):
the girls now to sexually arouse her, saying that one
of the things that passes back and forth when you're
swapping spit is testosterone, and since guys have more of it,
and because testosterone increases sex drive, these researchers are saying that,
of course a guy would want to get all slabbery
on you. He's trying to increase your sex drive via
(07:13):
his saliva. But you know, while that sounds frankly pretty creepy,
there are some other things, other good hormones being traded
back and forth in the kissing process. Yeah, they've measured
the levels of cortisol and oxytocin in people's brains before
and after making out, and cortisol, which is a stress
(07:34):
related to hormone, tends to go woid down if you
have a good makeout sish, relaxes you, chills you out,
and then unless it's gross, unless the guys trying to
shove too much testosterone in your mouth. But perhaps I'm
only saying that because women tend to analyze kisses from
a man far more uh with with a far more
(07:57):
scrutiny than guys do. Write we will judge a man
on his teeth, on his breath, all of the stuff,
whereas dudes are just like they see it as a
means to an end. One article that and we all
know what that but I think that makes sense. And
of course, as as you might expect her on stuff
now never told you, there is, you know, perhaps an
(08:19):
evolutionarily evolutionary reason as to why we analyze kisses morn
and of course it's babies. The thinking goes that if we,
you know, get that that burst of testosterone, we have
sex with the fella and we end up pregnant. Oh man,
you're stuck there with the kid for the rest of
your life. Which is why when you have this chance
just to judge the person on on the kissing style,
(08:43):
that's why women tend to read more into it well.
And and then also brings up oxytocin, the hormone that
I am that didn't talk about earlier that goes along
with cortisol. Researchers think that that oxytocin, which is a
bonding hormone that is often released in male and female
organ awesomes, goes up when you when you kiss someone,
(09:04):
but not as much as uh cortisol goes down. Basically,
it's more of a stress reliever than a really intense
bonding thing. Because you know it, really you can kiss
someone and walk away and not be a big deal. Right, Yeah,
we don't need researchers to tell us that kissing really
of stress. Yes, unless again less that's true. But one
(09:27):
thing I liked, this little fun fact about kissing. One
thing that does make it easier for us to kiss,
uh and not um say, bump heads. Not make it
so awkward, you know, like you've seem like comedic scenes
where couples are like going in and don't know how
to approach to those fools. But two thirds of adults
(09:49):
tend to tilt their head just automatically tilt their head
to the right when they go in for a kiss.
So it's kind of complimentary. You're coming at each other
from the same to action her chance of meeting. Yeah,
and this was research done by this German guy who
basically German. Yeah, Germans love kissing. What is it? Because
(10:11):
we talked about French kissing all the time, like it's
the you know, the knees. But maybe we should maybe
we should do us some German kissing instead. All right,
tell us more about what this resarctor found real quick,
and then I want to talk about French kissing right well,
in order to he was he wasn't so much interested
in kissing but in the head motor bias. Basically, how
(10:32):
we um, you know someone's right handed, They're often right
footed and will use rely on their right eye more often.
So you wanted to know if maybe the head tilt
of kissing followed in suit because the majority of people
are right handed. And for two and a half years
he hit out in the airports and watch people kiss,
(10:53):
and it took him that long to get a large
enough sample size to where he could conclude that, yes,
two thirds of us tilt to the right. Now I'm
a South Paul, though, Molly, you know, I don't know.
I haven't really taken a you know, my own sample. Um,
but as I sit here and I tilt my head
to the left, it feels a lot more natural than
(11:15):
tilting to the right. So yeah, I was probably gonna
make my next kissing encounter all the more awkward. I
was telling Kristen, I think this might be the first
subject where I'm really worried about overthinking something after I've
done all this research on it, because you know, as
soon as that head tilt starts gonna be like oh
I've fit into that that demographic. Yeah, you're gonna just
like switch to the left, just a break, break the mold,
(11:37):
Molly A right. And as you might imagine, that researcher
did admit that it was probably the creepiest research he
ever done, and that people would see him and just
kind of give him a look, and that that's some
dedication to your work to put up with all of that.
All right, I said, I want to talk about French kissing,
So let's talk about how this got its name. Yeah,
French kissing basically started because rumor broke out in your
(12:00):
of that probably probably started by the Germans. Probably started
by the Germans that if you wanted a good old snog,
you needed you need to find a French gill because
they were very um open with their kissing. They were
you know, they just you know, they kiss everyone. That
was sort of the thing is you could just walk
down the street and you see a French girl and
be like, WHOA, let's kiss. And so it wasn't that
(12:21):
they were necessarily known for this open mouth style. You know,
it's not like the French invent at the tongue. They
just got from the French. The tongue, new finding. They
just they're very forthcoming with their kisses. And so that's
how French kissing got this. Uh this you know, high status,
(12:41):
I guess. But you know what's funny as in India
they call it English kissing, right, which is interesting because
that first image of kissing from comes from India. So
what we be doing me kissing? Yeah, what's going on?
But our word, our English word kiss comes from you
guessed it the German word cuissan and I'm sure I'm mispronouncing.
(13:05):
It's k u s s j A n. Probably because
of the sound that it makes, and her she's kissed
got its name because of the sound it makes as
it comes out though, like chocolate squarter. Yeah, okay, right,
this was I think my favorite fun fact that came
out of researching this question, and that the average person
spends three six hours kissing of their lots. Three six hours.
(13:30):
It's a lot of kissing. You have some meeds and schapstick,
but your stress will be so low, Your stress will
be so low, and you're gonna feel great afterwards because
in addition to your stress of her most decreasing dopamine
and serotonin. Of course, shoot right on up in the brain,
giving you a little little brain reward. I mean, thanks
(13:52):
for all that, thanks for not making out. Let's talk
about um one iconic kiss, because I thought this was
really interesting. We found this New York Times article about how,
uh that famous kiss taken in Time Square of a
nurse and a sailor when the war ended, this you know,
just grabbed woman in a fit of happiness and joy
(14:15):
that the war was over, planted a big one honor.
And um, there's all this article about how so many
people have come forward saying that they were the person
in that photograph because you know, it's just so iconic
that you know, why wouldn't you want to be associated
with such a romantic moment? And uh, you know they've
got the guy pretty well established that this guy, and
(14:35):
the photographer thinks that he's found the woman that he
captured because when he took the picture, he didn't write
down their names. You know, he didn't know what he had.
And uh, the guy who's thought to be like the
guy in the picture doesn't believe that the girl is
the one he kissed. Yeah. The photograph, which I will
say is Time Life's most requested and reproduced image, was
taken by Alfred Eisenstatt, and he thinks that the photograph
(15:01):
is of Glenn McDuffie, who is about eighty years old
and lives in Houston. And but at least eleven other men,
according to The The New York Times, have stepped up to
claim that they're actually the dude in the picture. And
while several women have also said that they're the lucky
lady and smooched um, one of them, Edith Shane, seems
(15:23):
to have the strongest claim because the she contacted Eisenstead,
who flew out to California, photographed her and declared that
he believed that she was the one who got the kiss. Yeah,
but that guy does I think that's who he kissed.
I know the woman she kissed, and she ain't it.
That's a quote, that's all right, Glenn McDuffie. But apparently,
(15:43):
you know, the whole way Eisensat got the pictures, he
was following some some sailor just down the street, and
the sailor was just kissing everyone, and he just happened
to get this one picture. So I don't know if
I trust this guy to know everyone he kissed that day.
I don't know. You know, maybe maybe Glenn McDuffie has
a like a photographic memory for kissing everyone lips knows everyone.
(16:06):
He spread his testosterone too. Not only before we wrap
up this epic kissing episode, we need to bust one myth.
We got one kissing myth to bus alright, to a
myth to kiss off, feel stop stop the Eskimo kiss. Okay, Well,
(16:27):
there was this this theory the Eskimos can't kiss on
the lips because their mouths would freeze together. Tends to
be cold where Eskimos live. Hence we an eskimo kisses
when you rub noses right right, And this myth was
very firmly established by nineteen twenty movie Nanoke of the North,
and you know he, you know, the filmmaker basically assumed
(16:50):
that this is what they were doing to express emotion,
to kiss. But it just turned out that the mother
that um Robert Jay Flatterty, the a filmmaker filmed. He
filmed a woman just nuzzling her baby, and the woman
was giving her baby a canoope, which is an expression
of affection inanimate culture. And basically you just just pressed
(17:12):
the sides of your nose against the cheeks of your
baby and breathe and their scent, and who would want
to do that because baby smells so good. Yeah, but
it's never a romantic gesture. So kisses not fromantic, right,
but in Polynesian culture, so we do know that that
they do tend to to bonk noses. And you know,
part of the reason why no one knows exactly why
we kiss is that some cultures don't want to reb lips,
(17:34):
They just want to like touch some face, right, And
a lot of Asian and African cultures kissing on the
lips like we do, especially making out French style of
German style. Maybe we should start saying is totally foreign
and kind of gross. Yeah. There was actually uh talk
that was given at the Kansie Institute about this couple
that had marital difficulties basically cause they were from two
(17:54):
different cultures and couldn't reconcile their kissing style enough to
get it together in the bedroom. Um so um. It's
kind of a sad note to end on for a
Valentine's Day episode Kisses, but on a happy note for
those of us who do like kissing, it delivers quite
a reward of stress decreasing dopamine and siratoin and increasing,
(18:17):
and it also causes our pupils to dilate, which is
why we tend to close our eyes while we do it.
So let's our look at kissing and um. We hope
everyone out there has a happy Valentine's Day and a
happy Jerry's birthday. Yes, and most more importantly a happy
Jerry's birthday. On that note, if you want to send
us a Valentine or emails moms of it how stuff
works dot Com. Let's read a couple of emails from there.
(18:43):
So I have an email here from Bristita. It's about
the eyebrow episode, and Mercita shapes eyebrows for a living.
She is licensed by the state to do so. And
she writes, please please, please make sure when you get
your eyebrows waxed or anything waxed, but the person waxing
you is state licensed by law, their license should be visible.
If not, then I can't guarantee they went through the
proper training, which means it's scary and unsafe. Um. Not
(19:07):
to scaryone, but what if the person before I got
a bikini wax and had herpies and then someone goes
in and gets their eyebrows wax With the same wax,
that person can get hertpies. Oh my god, that person
can get herpies in the eye and can possibly blind
the person. So just be safe. Yes, I always look
for a valid license before putting wax anywhere. It's good
(19:32):
to know where to live by. Well, I've got one
here from Brooke And this is in response to our
episode on objective sexuality, and she writes the aspect of
people marrying objects drudged up bad associations for me of
one of the arguments against gay marriage. If we let
them do it, next thing, you know, people will want
to marry their dogs, which I do think is wrong
(19:53):
for many reasons, one of them being that one of
the parties in that comparison isn't even capable of consent.
But I've thought about my response more. If I put
away the negative feelings I get because of its similarity
to an argument made to deprive people of their rights
and separate merits, separate marriage from its legal meaning, I
can see it in a different light. I do think
(20:14):
that loving a dog would be different because dog isn't
capable of consent. I don't think objects are either, But
I also don't think they can be hurt, so that
becomes entirely irrelevant. I can't relate to feeling any sort
of love or affection for or from an object, but
I can relate to being made to feel wrong in
your own skin for something that's none of anyone else's concerned.
(20:35):
As long as no one's being hurt, then a person
should be allowed to find love wherever and however they can.
Thanks again for the thought provoking episode, and if you
have any thoughts to send our way again. Our email
is Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You
can also head over to Facebook and write stuff on
our wall. We'd love to see you there. In addition,
you can follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts
(20:59):
and read our blogged during the week. It's stuff Mom
Never Told You at how stuff works dot com For
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(21:19):
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