From “face-palm” to “tears of joy,” emoji are a great way to spice up a text message or get a point across. But where exactly do they come from? On this special episode of Start Here, producer Cameron Chertavian heads down the emoji rabbit hole, looking at how these now-ubiquitous pixelated images go from an idea in a creator's imagination to an icon on your phone. Cameron traces the complicated emoji-proposal process by speaking to a proposer, a linguist, and a member of the emoji governing body, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices