Learn about ploonets, which are moons that leave their planets; the unbelievable true story of D.D. Palmer, the first chiropractor; and why humans kiss. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Moons That Leave Their Planets Are Called Ploonets — https://curiosity.im/30CoK5f The Unbelievable True Story of the First Chiropractor — https://curiosity.im/2jCN33b Additional resources discussed: Ask Smithsonian: Why Do We Kiss? | Smithsonian.com — https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-why-do-we-kiss-180958059/ Is the Romantic–Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal? | American Anthropologist — https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/aman.12286 Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about ploonets, which are moons that leave their planets; the unbelievable true story of D.D. Palmer, the first chiropractor; and why humans kiss.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Additional resources discussed:
Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/history-of-kissing-the-unbelievable-true-story-of-the-first-chiropractor-and-moons-that-leave-their-planets-are-called-ploonets
CODY GROUGH: Happy holidays. We're going to help you celebrate with some of our favorite stories from the past year.
ASHLEY HAMER: We hope you enjoy these Curiosity Daily classics ad free. And stay subscribed to Curiosity Daily for brand new episodes starting January 1.
CODY GROUGH: Hi, we're here from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn about moons that leave their planets and the unbelievable true story of the first chiropractor. We'll also answer a listener question about why humans kiss.
CODY GROUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scientists have given a name to a moon that migrates from its home planet to orbit a star, and the name is amazing. They're calling it, a ploonet.
CODY GROUGH: If you still don't think science is cool after this, I don't know what to tell you.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, scientists are funny too, man. The only minor catch is that nobody has ever actually seen a ploonet. We do know for sure there are a bunch of Jupiter-sized planets that orbit super close to their parent stars.
Moons orbiting those planets would have to deal with a sort of tug of war between the gravitational forces of its huge planet and its even bigger star. If the moons don't get torn apart, it makes sense that they might migrate away from their home planet and go into orbit around the star. This is the scenario posed in a preprint paper on archive, which was led by Mario Sucerquia, a planetary scientist at the University of Antioquia in Colombia.
Simulations suggest that ploonets may be able to keep their orbits for a few hundred million years. More fortunate ploonets could pick up some material from the star and even grow big enough to be an actual planet. But most will likely get eaten by their parent star or ejected into cold space.
Of course, now that they've been named, we need to actually find a ploonet. In fact, we haven't found any confirmed moons of any type outside of our solar system. Astronomers argue that our telescopes just aren't strong enough to do that yet. They don't have the ability to collect the tiny amount of light that reflects off of the moon or detect the subtle changes in a planet's movements as a moon whips around it.
Other theories are that we may have already observed ploonets, but we didn't recognize them, or they might be hiding in strange light emissions that we see from distant stars. Of course, this is all likely to change. As technology improves, so too will our telescopes. Let's hope it's soon because a heavenly body with such a cute name certainly needs to be discovered.
CODY GROUGH: The true story of the first chiropractor is pretty unbelievable. And it's a history lesson that could help you understand why the alternative medicine known as chiropractic has straddled the metaphysical and the scientific since the very beginning. It all started with D.D. Palmer. He was a 19th century spiritualist and healer.
And in 1895, he was paid a visit by a medical luminary, Dr. Jim Atkinson. Only problem was Atkinson had died about 50 years earlier. That's right. Palmer was being visited by Atkinson's ghost. I told you this story was weird.
The long-dead doctor explained how misalignment of the body could result in serious injuries that could be cured by realignment. Enter Harvey Lillard. His story has a few versions, but he was either a janitor or the owner of the janitorial company at Palmer's office.
Lillard had a severe hearing impairment, until Palmer intervened. He either subjected Lillard to a precise chiropractic adjustment, or he just gave him a friendly slap on the back. Either way, this supposedly knocked Lillard's misaligned vertebra back into place, and he allegedly regained his sense of hearing. Thus, chiropractic was born.
The early days of this new practice were a struggle. Palmer was actually thrown in jail for performing medicine without a license. After he was released, he sold his practice to his son. And then he headed to California, only to be thrown in jail again.
For chiropractic to continue, it had to legitimize itself. And to do that, there were two options. Option one was to justify itself scientifically as an evidence-based medical practice. And option two was to sidestep that requirements by becoming a religion. Now ultimately, the medical strategy won out, and in 1922, the Chiropractic Initiative Act's passed, outlining the training requirements for a chiropractor to practice as a doctor.
For a while, though, Palmer did try to go the religious route. And that's why the spiritual side still lingers today, although most chiropractors these days tend to play up the medical side and downplay Palmer's religious bent. Palmer's son was so against the spiritual side of things.
There's a persistent rumor to this day that he actually killed his father. Amidst growing rivalry and resentment, Palmer was struck by his son's car during a homecoming parade. And he died a few weeks later. And the official cause of death was typhoid, but suspicions remain.
We'll probably never know the true story unless, of course, a ghost tells us. Or we build a time machine or necromancy. There's many possibilities.
ASHLEY HAMER: We got a listener question from Luke, who asks, why do we kiss? Do all cultures kiss? Great question, Luke.
For a long time, scientists believe that a large majority of human cultures took part in romantic kissing, like 90% of them. It was believed to be pretty much universal. But in 2015, three anthropologists gathered a huge data set from a whopping 168 human cultures to answer this question for real.
And wouldn't you know it? Cultures that kiss romantically are in the minority at only 46% of all cultures worldwide. They did find, though, that the more complex a culture's social structure was, the more likely romantic kissing was to be a thing.
That brings us to why we do it in the first place. And to tell you the truth, there isn't one answer to that question. There are plenty of complicated hoity-toity scientific reasons. Like getting close to one another lets us get a whiff of each other's sexy, sexy pheromones, which makes us either more or less likely to get to procreating, depending on whether we like what we smell.
Saliva is also chock-full of hormones our bodies use to judge mate compatibility. There's some evidence for this. Research suggests that women, especially, value kissing early on and are more likely to say that a first kiss can be the decider between selecting a mate and ghosting that next text.
Of course, judging from the research on human cultures and the fact that humans are almost the only animals who kiss, our closest relatives chimps and bonobos have been known to smooch each other too. It's clear the kissing isn't strictly necessary.
So maybe the answer is more simple than that. You've got a ton of nerve endings in your lips and mouth, and kissing just feels good. Thanks for your question, Luke.
CODY GROUGH: Now let's recap what we learned today. Today, we learned that moons that fly off their planets orbit and start to orbit their home star are called ploonets.
ASHLEY HAMER: And that the first chiropractor invented the practice, because he was visited by a ghost and fixed a janitor's sense of hearing. And maybe his son killed him. Totally, normal.
CODY GROUGH: And that not all cultures kiss. In fact, the minority of cultures kiss romantically. And we're not 100% sure why we started to do it in the first place. I mean, other than that one time, that princess had to kiss the frog to turn him back into a prince. But--
ASHLEY HAMER: That's the most wholesome kissing joke you could ever help us with.
CODY GROUGH: We're nothing if not wholesome. Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. Have a great rest of your weekend. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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