From Today I Found Out.

Our modern world is full of ideograms – simplified images meant to cleanly and unambiguously depict objects from everyday life. Drive down the street and you will see dozens of them – three circles in a vertical rectangle for traffic lights, a stylized boy and girl for a school zone, a set of tracks for a railroad crossing. Scroll through your phone and you will find hundreds more: a curved line for a phone, a rectangle and trapezoid for a speaker, nested curved lines for wifi, an eggplant for… things… But among these universally recognized symbols, one stands out as particularly strange: the heart symbol. After all, even those with the most rudimentary knowledge of human anatomy will recognize that this symbol with its pointed lower end and double-lobed crown looks almost nothing like a real human heart. So where, then, did it come from? How did this unusual shape come to symbolize not only a vital internal organ, but the very concept of love itself? Let’s dive into it, shall we?

Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Pacience Hiskey