Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the Old Vault. And this episode
Speaker 1: was called I Drink Your Blood Type. It was originally
Speaker 1: published on October three, nineteen. I hope you're ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly a year ago to the date. So let's drink
Speaker 1: blood drinkers, night walkers, children of the night. Why hunt
Speaker 1: for scraps in the shadows when you can feast in
Speaker 1: style at New York City's hottest, trendiest vampire nightclown doors
Speaker 1: open at midnight and we let in only the juiciest
Speaker 1: mortal party goers who appease your diabolical, he asked me,
Speaker 1: off of seductive lounges, blood bath dance floors, and people
Speaker 1: dancing in cages. So many people dancing in cages who
Speaker 1: don't even know how to give them out, They just
Speaker 1: keep dancing. And unlike typical vampire nightclubs, we separate the
Speaker 1: hood by blood type for your convenience. At Brooked, you
Speaker 1: will feast in the certainty that all human partiers and
Speaker 1: our medievalist to prove throwing room are type A B
Speaker 1: and our foam dance party Room runs on Type O
Speaker 1: negative exclusively guaranteeing chance floor look for us on Vampire
Speaker 1: You Help and don't forget to leave a review. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. A production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios has to works. Hey you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, it's still October. That means we're partying.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's Halloween, and Halloween means blood. It also
Speaker 1: means vampires. As I think everyone probably got the idea
Speaker 1: from from the title this episode and from the cold
Speaker 1: open that we just inflicted upon you. You know, what
Speaker 1: I was just wondering is whether in the month of
Speaker 1: October people actually like in the industry, you can see
Speaker 1: a spike in demand for caro syrup or general you know,
Speaker 1: corn syrup products and and red food coloring, is the
Speaker 1: demand for fake blood enough to make a dent in
Speaker 1: an otherwise massive agricultural or industrial food product, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it depends. I mean a lot of people are
Speaker 1: just going to buy a bottle of fake blood. They're
Speaker 1: not going to bother to mix their own. I guess
Speaker 1: that's you know, I bet mixing your own is cheaper though. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is. But not everybody has the skill
Speaker 1: to create a you know, a good batch of Kensington Gore. Uh.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid, I was trying
Speaker 1: to make fake blood and I did it by mixing
Speaker 1: red food coloring with water, and that was how I
Speaker 1: discovered that blood is thick. Yeah, I mean it. It's
Speaker 1: far better just to shoot it all in black and
Speaker 1: white and use chocolate syrup. But even that gets a little, little,
Speaker 1: little pricy, I imagine. And also it's gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: just attracted by of ants. But yeah, when you think Halloween,
Speaker 1: you think monsters, you think vampires, and of course you
Speaker 1: think blood. Now, blood hasn't really changed in the course
Speaker 1: of human history, but our understanding of blood has. Blood
Speaker 1: Letting used to be a lot more common, right, yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And sometimes sometimes vampire tails change to reflect some of
Speaker 1: the new ideas regarding blood. Oh yeah, Like, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can see vampire lore being affected by, say that
Speaker 1: the four humors theory when that was in vogue, Like
Speaker 1: the idea you could have a sanguine personality that might
Speaker 1: be caused by an excess of blood. In the body.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that makes them specially juicy targets for
Speaker 1: vampires or something that you're gonna mean, there's like there
Speaker 1: are there are four different vampires for each of the humors, right,
Speaker 1: oh right, so you get the black bile vampire and
Speaker 1: the worst kind of vampire to be because it's so bitter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the ideas of what blood is make change.
Speaker 1: But of course there's first of all, the simple notion
Speaker 1: that blood is food. Various human cultures include the consumption
Speaker 1: of animal blood in one worm or another in their cuisine.
Speaker 1: Blood sausage is one example of that. Blood tofu and
Speaker 1: in certain Chinese cuisines is another example. Never heard of
Speaker 1: this blood tofu? Yeah, look aout made from blood? Blood? Okay? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then there's the idea of blood is this is
Speaker 1: a fluid that contains our vital life force. Right, this
Speaker 1: is a classic of the vampire trope. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: naturally we do need blood to survive. But traditions have
Speaker 1: you know, tend to go above and beyond biological fact
Speaker 1: and stressing this. Oh yeah, the blood takes on a
Speaker 1: kind of magical essence. It's the you know, the ecore
Speaker 1: of the human Uh, there is. I think you can
Speaker 1: see this often when there is emphasis on monsters and
Speaker 1: other creatures having differently colored blood than humans do. Like
Speaker 1: their blood isn't red, it's green, and that shows that
Speaker 1: there's some different there's some kind of different essence to them.
Speaker 1: And then there's also all kinds of beliefs about Um.
Speaker 1: You know that your affinity for your family is based
Speaker 1: on the metaphor that you air blood, which is funny
Speaker 1: because you might not necessarily share physical characteristics of blood.
Speaker 1: You might not have the same blood type as either
Speaker 1: one of your parents, But there's this idea that you're
Speaker 1: bound by blood and that I think that takes on
Speaker 1: a more kind of a magical kind of quality in
Speaker 1: people's minds. Yeah, this idea that there's this blood line
Speaker 1: flowing through the centuries. Um, I do have to say
Speaker 1: I love a creative blood color, and in a monster
Speaker 1: or so certainly in like a Star Trek alien type
Speaker 1: of scenario, if there's only so many colors, like what
Speaker 1: you mean, like purple blood or what? Oh yeah, wasn't
Speaker 1: it Star Trek The Undiscovered Country where the Klingon's head
Speaker 1: head pink blood like looks like pepto bismal. Oh. I
Speaker 1: always chalks that up too bad early c G I,
Speaker 1: because they're in their blood c G I, and that
Speaker 1: movie is like really early c G I floating around
Speaker 1: in the zero G environment after the as it is
Speaker 1: really impressive. Well, it looks terrible now, but that movie
Speaker 1: still holds up. Is one of the better of the
Speaker 1: Star Trek movies. Now in modern times will often encounter
Speaker 1: vampire stories that invoke blood banks and and uh and
Speaker 1: blood drives sometimes uh and sometimes you'll even see recognition
Speaker 1: of blood types. And generally this amounts to which blood
Speaker 1: of vampire finds most tasty interesting. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: very familiar with it. Well, I am familiar with, of course,
Speaker 1: blood banks and blood drives, because I remember when I
Speaker 1: was a kid and my family would go to the
Speaker 1: beach and we get Sci Fi channel on the TV
Speaker 1: and watch that show Forever Night, which is about a
Speaker 1: good guy vampire who is also a cop, and he
Speaker 1: keeps a refrigerator full of like blood bank type style
Speaker 1: blood bags. I guess he drinks those in order to
Speaker 1: not have to kill people because he's good. Oh Man,
Speaker 1: Forever Night. I never watched Forever Night, but it's one
Speaker 1: of those Canadian series where a lot of times I'll
Speaker 1: watch another Canadian series and I'll look it up and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this person is from Forever Night. Forever
Speaker 1: Night is the like the beating heart at the center
Speaker 1: of Canadian drama from that period of time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I never saw that much of it, but in
Speaker 1: the episodes I saw, because he's a good guy, he
Speaker 1: doesn't drink from next he drinks from bags. There's um
Speaker 1: there's a Tales from the Crypto episode that called the
Speaker 1: Reluctant Vampire that started Malcolm mcdowe as as the titular
Speaker 1: Reluctant Vampire and also had just an all star cast.
Speaker 1: Of course, like all those episodes, just an embarrassment of
Speaker 1: riches generally squandered on some sort of in a sappy,
Speaker 1: bad taste kind of plot. But this this episode is
Speaker 1: pretty good. But in that one, he's depending on a
Speaker 1: blood bank as well. But then occasionally like meeting real
Speaker 1: live hosts to prey upon, and he ends up asking
Speaker 1: them a lot of questions about, you know, if they
Speaker 1: had dental surgery recently, that sort of thing, But but
Speaker 1: he he never asked them about their actual blood type,
Speaker 1: dental surgery, wait, like he fears the amalgam in their
Speaker 1: teeth or something like, we might have silver and if
Speaker 1: he just needs to have a good pa you know,
Speaker 1: biomedical history before he uses them as his prey. Fair enough, now,
Speaker 1: of course, the the HBO series True Blood features vampires
Speaker 1: that have a clear preference when it comes to blood type,
Speaker 1: and they use the synthetic blood product that's labeled and
Speaker 1: bottled called True Blood, which is in the show available
Speaker 1: in in different types. So you can get your oh
Speaker 1: negative true blood bottle you if you prefer a B,
Speaker 1: they have a B as well. Oh so all the
Speaker 1: I haven't seen True Blood, but all these vampires are
Speaker 1: of the forever Night type where they don't drink from people.
Speaker 1: They drink from bags they're supposed to because it's basically
Speaker 1: like vampires are out amongst us, uh, and we're living
Speaker 1: alongside each other. They have kind of their separate government.
Speaker 1: We have ours, and there's like a treaty that says
Speaker 1: they're only going to drink their synthetic blood products or
Speaker 1: you know, consenting adult humans that wish to have their
Speaker 1: blood drained that sort of thing. Okay, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a mixed bag, but it it also has a wonderful cast,
Speaker 1: and Dennis o Hair in particular was a real standout
Speaker 1: playing this character the who was the King of Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Stephen Root also ow it up at one point and
Speaker 1: it was great. Stephen Roots wonderful. Yeah. Um, There's another
Speaker 1: movie at this time that I ran across that was
Speaker 1: interesting that invokes blood types. N nine's The Return of
Speaker 1: Doctor X. Seen this no, I. I was not even
Speaker 1: familiar with this at all because it stars Humphrey Bogart
Speaker 1: as an evil doctor. Hey, okay, yeah, who's been brought
Speaker 1: back to life? Because this is a sequel? Uh in
Speaker 1: this in this movie has brought back to life with
Speaker 1: synthetic blood and he has to find type of victims
Speaker 1: and drain their blood and use it in order to
Speaker 1: stay alive because his synthetic blood cannot replenish itself. This
Speaker 1: was a few years before The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.
Speaker 1: In case anyone's wondering, you know, I like I really
Speaker 1: like Humphrey Bogart as a villain type character, or at
Speaker 1: least as a very dark and troubled character as opposed
Speaker 1: to I don't know. You might say that he has
Speaker 1: shades of villainousness in his detective stories and in Casablanca,
Speaker 1: but in movies like A Lonely Place, or he plays
Speaker 1: this like scary, abusive creep or in Treasure the Serrah Mare.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say also, I think Bogart actually
Speaker 1: makes a great villain, and I wish you'd seen him
Speaker 1: as a villain more often. So I want to see this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And now, of course Dr X is no typical vampire. Generally,
Speaker 1: the you know, the models very much parasitic in nature.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a vampire can taste the difference amid blood types
Speaker 1: in the same manner that a wine connoisseur can taste
Speaker 1: things in the wine that others can't, or at least,
Speaker 1: you know, claims to have that ability. You've got some
Speaker 1: skepticism about the smell, YEA. I want to come back
Speaker 1: to it at some point, because I feel like there
Speaker 1: was an old episode of the show where we we
Speaker 1: looked at one of these studies that was a real um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know that what extended was
Speaker 1: a true study, was just kind of a guy who
Speaker 1: got you exercise with wine experts, like tricking them into
Speaker 1: saying one wine was another, and and and so forth.
Speaker 1: But I think there's I'd like to to give the
Speaker 1: topic due diligence sometime and really get into like, because
Speaker 1: sometimes the you know, the idea of priming and you know,
Speaker 1: bringing in some sort of prior knowledge to your experience
Speaker 1: of the wine. Uh. You see people talk about that
Speaker 1: is if that's a you know, a negative you know,
Speaker 1: But I mean that's part of the appreciation of any
Speaker 1: kind of food product or certainly a wine is knowing
Speaker 1: where it came from and making connections. And if some
Speaker 1: of the connections or maybe partially imagined or exaggerated based
Speaker 1: on your prior knowledge, I don't think that's necessarily a
Speaker 1: bad thing at all. Have you been to any of
Speaker 1: these places that do wine style tasting notes but for oysters, Um, yes,
Speaker 1: I have. I'm all in on that. When I have
Speaker 1: the oyster, I'm like, yes, I take yes, that's right,
Speaker 1: salted melon, yeah. I mean the cases like that, they're
Speaker 1: providing me with the specific terminology and descriptive language that
Speaker 1: I don't have, uh, you know, regarding oysters or or
Speaker 1: certainly wine or what have you, and it gives and
Speaker 1: then I can I can look for those things in
Speaker 1: my my taste sensation that I'm experiencing right now. Once
Speaker 1: they give you the words for it, you can kind
Speaker 1: of find it in the sensation void with with most
Speaker 1: cases of fictional vampires, though, yeah, they're I think we
Speaker 1: can we can assume that maybe they could taste some
Speaker 1: sort of difference in the blood type. You know, they're
Speaker 1: essentially parasitic. They're they're digesting the blood now. And since
Speaker 1: they're digesting the blood, you know it's not going to matter,
Speaker 1: um you know what kind of what type of blood
Speaker 1: it is, because their digestive system is going to break
Speaker 1: down all those troublesome proteins. But then again, I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever seen outside of doctor X here, I
Speaker 1: don't think I've encountered a vampire or vampire like creation
Speaker 1: that can only use one particular blood type. Well, if
Speaker 1: you imagine vampire physiology a little bit different, Like you're
Speaker 1: saying that they just use a normal style digestive system,
Speaker 1: break it down for the nutrition in it. What if
Speaker 1: it's that the vampire drinks blood in order to have blood,
Speaker 1: So like when the vampire drinks blood, they're essentially getting
Speaker 1: a blood transfusion. In that case, maybe the vampire would
Speaker 1: need in fact, to have a compatibility test for the
Speaker 1: right kind of blood because drinking the wrong kind of
Speaker 1: blood could give them an immune response. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: I think it can make sense because it also would
Speaker 1: would line up with some of these descriptions from folklore
Speaker 1: where they would dig up the body of the vampire
Speaker 1: and it would be just just just thick and bloated
Speaker 1: with blood, like every you know, all its entire all
Speaker 1: of its flesh is just just completely ballooned up with
Speaker 1: the stuff. You know, you're saying that's the swelling of
Speaker 1: the allergic reaction. Yeah, maybe, so maybe that's the that's
Speaker 1: the explanation. Well, maybe we should get into how blood
Speaker 1: types actually work, because I realized not too long ago
Speaker 1: that this is something I should know, and I actually didn't,
Speaker 1: so I had to go and read up about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to go through life without knowing the
Speaker 1: explanation for it and just and hopefully just knowing what
Speaker 1: your blood type is, but not necessarily what that means. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: should we take a break first and then come back
Speaker 1: and talk about the blood type basics. Let's do it, alright,
Speaker 1: We're back al right, So, if you know your blood
Speaker 1: type or if you've seen blood types listed before, you
Speaker 1: generally will have seen a letter followed by a plus
Speaker 1: or minus sign, and that letter is probably gonna be
Speaker 1: A or B or A B or O, but is
Speaker 1: so okay? You know there are at least several different
Speaker 1: types of blood, but you might not know what they do.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are actually many different blood type families.
Speaker 1: I think the known number of human blood group systems
Speaker 1: is now somewhere in the forties, So there are tons
Speaker 1: of different ways of classifying and grouping blood. But the
Speaker 1: most common and the most important blood group types to
Speaker 1: discuss are the A, B O blood group system and
Speaker 1: what's known as the r H factor. Now you've heard
Speaker 1: of these before, but what do they mean? Simply put,
Speaker 1: blood type refers to which category of antigens you will
Speaker 1: find on the outside of your red blood cells, and
Speaker 1: that in turn determines how your body's immune system responds
Speaker 1: to different types of blood from other donors because of
Speaker 1: the antigens on the outside of their red blood cells,
Speaker 1: and also how other people's bodies would respond to your
Speaker 1: blood if you if given a transfusion from you. By
Speaker 1: the way, Joe, before we go any further, what is
Speaker 1: your blood type, I almost answered, but then I stopped.
Speaker 1: Should I reveal my blood type on air? I wonder
Speaker 1: I'm getting flashes of some future like cyber scenario where
Speaker 1: I regret sharing this information publicly. Well, I can't think
Speaker 1: of a way people would use it against us. I
Speaker 1: can think of a way Facebook will use it against us.
Speaker 1: Well probably, Okay, Well, you don't have to reveal if
Speaker 1: you don't want to. You want to reveal yours? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't mind saying that I'm I'm typo negatives.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, just like the goth industrial band of the
Speaker 1: same name. Well, you also have a rare and important
Speaker 1: blood group, as we'll discuss as we go on. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll just consider Joe's blood type to be
Speaker 1: what blood type enigma, Well, we'll leave it to the
Speaker 1: listeners to imagine what it might be. Blood type question
Speaker 1: mark equal sign. Yes, okay. So, red blood cells, we
Speaker 1: know they serve the function of traveling through the body
Speaker 1: and transporting oxygen mal fules to body tissues, and they
Speaker 1: also carry away carbon dioxide. And so the outsides of
Speaker 1: the red blood cells in your body will have these
Speaker 1: little molecules on the outside on these structures made of molecules.
Speaker 1: Uh that on the top layers of these structures consist
Speaker 1: of various types of antigens that the and of course,
Speaker 1: an antigen is just something that your body's immune system
Speaker 1: can recognize as a threat and react to. And so
Speaker 1: your red blood cells can have either a antigens, be antigens, both,
Speaker 1: or neither. If your red blood cells just have A antigens,
Speaker 1: just these A antigen molecules on the outer layer, you
Speaker 1: have blood type A. If you have just BE antigens,
Speaker 1: you have blood type B. If you have both your
Speaker 1: blood type A B, and if you have neither, you
Speaker 1: are blood type Oh all right, I think that's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: So really, yeah, they're they're like two critters at play here.
Speaker 1: You can have either one, both, or neither. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: blood types are genetically inherited, you get them from your
Speaker 1: biological parents, but your a bio blood type is based
Speaker 1: on interactions between a number of dominant and recessive genes.
Speaker 1: So the correlation between your parents blood types and your
Speaker 1: own blood type can be kind of confusing. It can,
Speaker 1: for example, happened that your blood type might be different
Speaker 1: from both of your parents blood types because of a
Speaker 1: dominant recessive interaction. Um. But if you want to work
Speaker 1: it out, you can look up inheritance matrices for blood
Speaker 1: type online. These are easy to find, right, Or you
Speaker 1: can just do like most families do and just put
Speaker 1: your blood in a petri dish and just go around
Speaker 1: in a circle and put a hot wire in that
Speaker 1: way he can find out whose family and who is
Speaker 1: definitely not well. It's funny how how close that that
Speaker 1: scene in the thing is to some of the early
Speaker 1: tests that were done to figure out what was going
Speaker 1: on with blood types. Get into that in a minute. Um.
Speaker 1: So again, why does it matter which type of blood
Speaker 1: you have if you're going to receive a blood transfusion. Well, again,
Speaker 1: it's because of your immune system. So within your body,
Speaker 1: you've got in your blood plasma, you have white blood cells,
Speaker 1: and you've got antibodies that work kind of like defense drones,
Speaker 1: latching onto certain types of antigens that they encounter things
Speaker 1: in your body that seem like they might be some
Speaker 1: bit of dangerous foreign material in the blood. And of
Speaker 1: course the main thing you'd be worried about, there are
Speaker 1: some kinds of germs. Right now, generally we don't have
Speaker 1: antibodies that will attack our own red blood cells. So
Speaker 1: if you have blood type A, meaning you've got these
Speaker 1: A antigens on the outside of your red blood cells,
Speaker 1: your immune system will not attack A antigens because you
Speaker 1: know you need to not attack them, they're they're going
Speaker 1: to be abundant throughout you. But it probably will attack
Speaker 1: BE antigens and vice versa. So generally your immune system
Speaker 1: will attack whichever of these little molecules on the outside
Speaker 1: of red blood cells you don't naturally have. So it
Speaker 1: works out like this. If you have type A blood,
Speaker 1: your immune system will attack BE antigens. If you have
Speaker 1: type BE blood, your immune system will attack A antigens.
Speaker 1: If you have type A B blood, you have both antigens,
Speaker 1: so your immune system will attack neither of them. If
Speaker 1: you have Type OH blood, you have neither antigens, so
Speaker 1: your immune system will attack both following So far, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think it's pretty straightforward for everybody. So
Speaker 1: it's basically you know the starbillied sneeches, except a little
Speaker 1: more complicated, like like you know three or four different
Speaker 1: tribes of sneches. Well, right, I mean this means that
Speaker 1: when you donate or receive a blood transfusion, you don't
Speaker 1: always just need to match the same type between donor
Speaker 1: and recipient. There are these inherent asymmetries and who can
Speaker 1: receive what types of blood. For example, if you have
Speaker 1: a B blood, you can receive blood from any other type.
Speaker 1: You can receive A blood, you can receive B blood,
Speaker 1: you can receive A B blood or OH blood. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because you don't in your blood plasma have
Speaker 1: antibodies to attack any of those other types of red
Speaker 1: blood cells. And for this reason, type A B is
Speaker 1: the unit versal recipient class. But if you donate a
Speaker 1: B blood, that blood can only go to a recipient
Speaker 1: who is also a B because that recipient otherwise is
Speaker 1: going to have immune system reaction to one of one
Speaker 1: or both of those antigens on the outside of those cells. Now,
Speaker 1: on the flip side, type OH blood, which has neither
Speaker 1: A nor B antigens, is the universal donor class. You
Speaker 1: can give type O blood to people with A B, A, B,
Speaker 1: or OH and it will usually be fine. Now I
Speaker 1: think we should say that these donor you know, these
Speaker 1: donor safety statements are for most cases, these are like
Speaker 1: on average, they'll be better. There are always kind of
Speaker 1: like anomalous reactions people can have to any type of protonation,
Speaker 1: and and and and that also gets into the fact
Speaker 1: that all things being equal, an exact match is always preferred,
Speaker 1: but certainly in an emergency. Uh, that's when you see
Speaker 1: cases where where you know the universal donor can come
Speaker 1: in exactly. And that's a one reason. A common practice
Speaker 1: in modern hospitals and clinics today is to collect blood
Speaker 1: from a patient in advance of a preplanned surgery or
Speaker 1: procedure in which a transfusion might be necessary. So if
Speaker 1: you're going in for surgery these days, they'll usually take
Speaker 1: some of your blood, you know, the day before, the
Speaker 1: week before the surgery, and that way, if you suddenly
Speaker 1: need a transfusion, if there's some emergency during the procedure,
Speaker 1: you can receive your own blood, decreasing the chance of
Speaker 1: an immune immune reaction or any other compatibility issue. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not that your your doctor is of secret vampire,
Speaker 1: right and just needs a taste before things get going, right,
Speaker 1: But there may be times when somebody needs a blood
Speaker 1: transfusion and there's none of their own blood on hand
Speaker 1: to give them, so they need blood from a bank,
Speaker 1: They need blood from a donor from a reserve of
Speaker 1: pre stored blood. That's they're waiting for somebody who needs it. Now,
Speaker 1: we should also say, on top of the A B
Speaker 1: O system, there's also the r H factor, which is
Speaker 1: just yet another type of thing that you would find
Speaker 1: on the outside of red blood cells. This time it's
Speaker 1: a protein UH that's known as the UH the recess
Speaker 1: factor r H factor after the recess monkeys from which
Speaker 1: it was originally studied and isolated UH, and it works
Speaker 1: sort of the same way. Basically, there are only two
Speaker 1: options with the RH factor factor. Either you have these proteins,
Speaker 1: meaning you're RH positive, or you don't have them, meaning
Speaker 1: you'r RH negative. And the RH factor is noted with
Speaker 1: a plus or a minus sign after your A B
Speaker 1: O type. So the true universal donor is actually not
Speaker 1: just blood type OH, but blood type O negative, and
Speaker 1: the universal recipient is not just type A B but
Speaker 1: type A B positive. Now that's the simplified version, but
Speaker 1: it also gets more complicated because the blood donor and
Speaker 1: recipient compatibility is very based on whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: like red blood cells versus plasma. Like your red blood
Speaker 1: cells contain the antigens for your blood type, but your
Speaker 1: plasma will contain the antibodies or potential immune response correlated
Speaker 1: to your blood type. So most of what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about so far has been for the red blood
Speaker 1: cells that would be donated or received. But yeah, so again,
Speaker 1: so you mentioned your type of negative. You are the
Speaker 1: universal donor, Robert, You're you're you're kind of human gold. Well,
Speaker 1: I do have to stress it. I think that is
Speaker 1: what we have to be careful about overstating that, not
Speaker 1: that I'm gold, because obviously I don't want people to
Speaker 1: harvest my blood without my consent. I do try and
Speaker 1: give give blood, um, you know, a lot when whenever
Speaker 1: there's a blood drive and I'm allowed, you know, to
Speaker 1: do so. But but but also nobody out there who
Speaker 1: is like a B needs to to feel like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: my blood is not as valuable. I'm gonna sit this
Speaker 1: one out, like they don't really need my blood because
Speaker 1: I'm not negative. Like, no, your blood is still really
Speaker 1: important because again, all things being equal, they're going to
Speaker 1: try and do as as close of a match as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's totally right. All all blood is valuable, all all
Speaker 1: blood is beautiful, then maybe all blood is delicious uh
Speaker 1: should we. So let's let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that the blood serum clumping test we mentioned earlier. Now,
Speaker 1: the Austrian immunologist and pathologist Carl Landsteiner, who I keep
Speaker 1: accidentally calling land Striders. Stop me if I do get
Speaker 1: get dark crystal brain. But Carl Landsteiner, Uh, he discovered
Speaker 1: the primary A bio blood groups around the year's nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred or nineteen o one. And at the time, doctors
Speaker 1: knew that blood transfusions could be very dangerous, could kill patients,
Speaker 1: they caused adverse reactions and the recipient um. And you know,
Speaker 1: up until around this time that there was a good
Speaker 1: reason why blood transfusion wasn't done much. It was considered
Speaker 1: sort of a risky, experimental kind of thing, not not
Speaker 1: like a standard medical intervention. Yeah, I realized I probably
Speaker 1: bring this show up every time we talked about the
Speaker 1: history um of of surgery. But the the excellent cinemax
Speaker 1: series from Soderberg the Nick there's one scene in which
Speaker 1: they attempt a blood transfusion um to save a patient
Speaker 1: and the patients is just killed on the operating table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that would have been a reality at
Speaker 1: this time, Like if few. So there were surgeons who
Speaker 1: tried to experiment with blood transfusions because patients died all
Speaker 1: the time for from blood loss, and so you know,
Speaker 1: if you could find a way to get blood into
Speaker 1: them to save their life, that would be great. And
Speaker 1: sometimes it worked, but a lot of times it didn't.
Speaker 1: And it if it didn't work, there were chances it
Speaker 1: could go catastrophically bad and could kill you. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they they think, they begin to realize, yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: there's some code in the blood, there's some there's something here.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that it works sometimes but not other times.
Speaker 1: We just have to figure out what that is. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that doctors of the time observed
Speaker 1: is that you could see this if you just mixed
Speaker 1: together blood samples from different patients in uh in in
Speaker 1: dishes or in tubes. Sometimes when you mix together blood
Speaker 1: samples from different patients, you would get what was known
Speaker 1: as a glutination, which is where the red blood cells
Speaker 1: I'll start to clump together. That's not good if that
Speaker 1: happens inside your body. Right, So it's clearly that's a
Speaker 1: major thing must be happening in these cases where you
Speaker 1: give humans a blood transfusion and it goes really wrong.
Speaker 1: And yet while we knew these negative reactions could happen,
Speaker 1: we didn't know exactly why. And land Steiner comes in here.
Speaker 1: He figures out that this adverse reaction to donated blood
Speaker 1: was because the recipient's immune system in the plasma is
Speaker 1: attacking the new blood cells like they were germs. And
Speaker 1: land Steiner figured out that these immune reactions were correlated
Speaker 1: to four categories of antigen profiles in red blood cells,
Speaker 1: which now from from which we've now derived the first
Speaker 1: he discovered the A group, the B group in the
Speaker 1: O group, and then a little bit later he discovered
Speaker 1: the A B group also. But as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: there are these other blood factors, and len Steiner discovered
Speaker 1: several of those as well, such as like m in
Speaker 1: and P factors, And he was also involved in research
Speaker 1: decades later that led to the discovery of the RH factor. Again,
Speaker 1: that's like the plus and the minus sign after you
Speaker 1: see the most common blood types in the A B
Speaker 1: group or the A B group. Uh and Lensteiner eventually
Speaker 1: won the Nobel Prize for his research, which was essential
Speaker 1: to making blood transfusions safe and commonplace. So this was
Speaker 1: like very important work in the history of medicine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is one of those technicus surgical technologies,
Speaker 1: medical technologies that it's hard to imagine, like modern medical
Speaker 1: science without the ability to give blood transfusions. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: But there still is an underlying mystery here, something that
Speaker 1: we haven't fully solved yet. Why do we have different
Speaker 1: blood types? Like what evolutionary pressures, if any, brought about
Speaker 1: these different uh, these different antigen structures on the outside
Speaker 1: of red blood cells. And this is still to some
Speaker 1: extent and unsolved mystery and human evolution. But I think,
Speaker 1: at least as far as I've read, there are some
Speaker 1: indications that the evolved differences in blood types may have
Speaker 1: something to do with different pressures related to immune response
Speaker 1: and protection against disease. Yeah, that's that's that's what I'm
Speaker 1: from from from the information I was looking at here. Um,
Speaker 1: So let's get into this the idea that in a sense,
Speaker 1: there are powers in the blood or or more specifically,
Speaker 1: I guess that that different blood types bring with them
Speaker 1: different immune strengths and in some cases perhaps immune weaknesses.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is a very common thing to
Speaker 1: find in human evolution. A lot of times you see
Speaker 1: different population groups with slight differences, and you wonder why.
Speaker 1: And it's because of some local parasite that people's ancestors
Speaker 1: evolved to h to resist. And so let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about the parasites here. The real blood drinkers, the real
Speaker 1: dangerous vampires. Uh, not count Dracula, but the but the
Speaker 1: the mosquitoes that drink human blood, that hunt is for
Speaker 1: our blood and spread a host of deadly diseases in
Speaker 1: the process, the real vampires. Yes, so you know you
Speaker 1: may have heard before, you may have read this before
Speaker 1: that mosquitoes prefer typo blood. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: had heard that, But once you start looking for it,
Speaker 1: you see it all over the place. Uh. And more
Speaker 1: than that, you probably read it in any number of
Speaker 1: articles in in very trustworthy publications. Uh. And it's it's
Speaker 1: been widely reported. You know that people with TYPEO are
Speaker 1: bitten twice as often as people with type A, while
Speaker 1: Type B falls somewhere in between. Okay, so wait, you
Speaker 1: get betten a lot by mosquitoes. I mean I do.
Speaker 1: I was been numerous times yesterday actually a whole researching
Speaker 1: this because I was working out on the porch and
Speaker 1: then it grilled in the afternoon, and I was thinking, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I surely get attacked by them a lot,
Speaker 1: but then that proves it. But yeah, that's hardly proved.
Speaker 1: That's just like if any time you're bit my mosquito
Speaker 1: fed upon my mosquito, you know that's that's one time
Speaker 1: too many, right, So a lot of these articles though
Speaker 1: there they end up pointing to a two thousand and
Speaker 1: four study from the Journal of Medicine Etymology from two
Speaker 1: thousand four from Cheray at All which found that quote,
Speaker 1: blood group OH subjects attracted more uh mosquitoes than other
Speaker 1: blood groups be A, B, and A, but we're significantly
Speaker 1: more attractive than blood group A subjects in sixty four
Speaker 1: human landing tests. So um, yeah, this one's this one
Speaker 1: is cited a lot. I'll come back to that in
Speaker 1: a second, but I want to point out that the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian magazine has an article about the about this, and
Speaker 1: they point out that, you know, based on genes, about
Speaker 1: eight people secrete a chemical signal that broadcasts their blood type,
Speaker 1: about fifteen percent do not, and mosquitoes are apparently more
Speaker 1: attracted to secret ors. Now, to be clear, though there
Speaker 1: are plenty of other factors here at well that play
Speaker 1: into whether mosquitoes will swarm to you. They don't care
Speaker 1: about gender, hair color, or pigmentation, but they can be
Speaker 1: attracted by the big one. One of the big ones
Speaker 1: is carbon dioxide. Uh, sweat, high body temperature is a
Speaker 1: big one. Uh, certain skin bacteria, ethanol excretion, and sweat
Speaker 1: due to beer concid. Yeah, pregnancy apparently as a factor,
Speaker 1: but that seems to come down to just carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: and warmth, like increased carbon dioxide and warmth, and then
Speaker 1: also dark clothing, which that's one that matches up. I
Speaker 1: found with my experience killing mosquitoes is that they'll be
Speaker 1: attracted to dark things I'm wearing. And then if I'm
Speaker 1: killing them, say in a bungalow, they're going to go
Speaker 1: to the dark corners of the bungalow to try and
Speaker 1: get away from me. Well, I wonder if it's because
Speaker 1: out on a warm day, dark clothing gets hotter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. They're attracted to heat. Yeah, again, heats one
Speaker 1: of the big ones. Now, the notion that mosquitoes prefer
Speaker 1: type of blood did not hold up for long. The
Speaker 1: study was criticized for statistical problems. Uh. Joseph Conelin, technical
Speaker 1: adviser of the American Mosquito Control Association, has dismissed this
Speaker 1: as a as as as not being that that big
Speaker 1: of a factor or not being a factor at all.
Speaker 1: But but you still see it decided quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But as far as I can tell, UH, based on
Speaker 1: the re search here, I don't think blood type really
Speaker 1: plays into whether or not a mosquito is going to
Speaker 1: feast under blood or certainly it's not. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: not going to compare to the other factors that are
Speaker 1: going to dictate whether or not you're going to be
Speaker 1: fed upon. Now, on the other hand, there does seem
Speaker 1: to be evidence that people with type OH blood are
Speaker 1: protected from the most severe forms of malaria. According to
Speaker 1: a two thousand fifteen Swedish study, a protein secreted by
Speaker 1: malarial parasites only bonds weekly with type of blood cells,
Speaker 1: but bonds strongly to a As a result, type of
Speaker 1: blood is more prominent in malaria plague regions. The researchers
Speaker 1: from the Caroliniska Institute point out that roughly half of
Speaker 1: Nigeria's population has type of blood. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this is uh, this is how it breaks down in
Speaker 1: the United States. According to the Red Cross, UH OH
Speaker 1: positive blood you'll find UH forty seven percent among African Americans,
Speaker 1: thirty nine among Asians, thirty seven percent among Caucasians, fifty
Speaker 1: among Latino Americans, and then OH negative four percent among
Speaker 1: African Americans, one percent among Asians, eight percent among Caucasians,
Speaker 1: and four percent among Latino Americans. So having type OH
Speaker 1: blood with the positive rh factor is much more common, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and certainly you see, like in the the American
Speaker 1: the African American population, you do see that significantly higher
Speaker 1: um rate of O positive blood. Likewise with Latino American
Speaker 1: blood as well. So I think these are some of
Speaker 1: the key statistics that people are focusing in on when
Speaker 1: they're making a case for UH. You know, the blood
Speaker 1: type having this uh this immune factor. You know that
Speaker 1: this is the reason you find these different blood types
Speaker 1: in different human populations, the result of your more recent
Speaker 1: ancestors being exposed to more malaria risk. Yeah. Now, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, people with type OH blood tend to
Speaker 1: become more severely ill from cholera compared to other blood types,
Speaker 1: and according to a two thousand sixteen study from the
Speaker 1: Washington University School of Medicine. It may be due to
Speaker 1: the way that blood type influences how strongly cholera toxin
Speaker 1: activates intestinal cells leading to diarrhea. Oh yeah, I was
Speaker 1: also reading about some evidence that there may be different
Speaker 1: responses to norovirus having to do with blood types. Well that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would make sense too. Um. I've also seen a
Speaker 1: B and A by link to higher risk for coronary
Speaker 1: heart disease, but I didn't I didn't look into that, uh,
Speaker 1: super closely. I'm not sure how much of that is
Speaker 1: is really ironed out, or or to what extent is correlation.
Speaker 1: I think type A blood is associated with greater risks
Speaker 1: for some types of cancers. Now, of course, as we
Speaker 1: stressed already, one of the most important aspects of type
Speaker 1: of blood remains that it is a universal donor, meaning
Speaker 1: that an in an emergency, it can be used with
Speaker 1: the lowest risk of series reactions for all blood types.
Speaker 1: And so as you might imagine, it would be ideal
Speaker 1: to be able to transform any blood type into a
Speaker 1: universal donor, right Uh. And I suppose our vampires would
Speaker 1: would very much like that as well, if they indeed
Speaker 1: prefer um O oh negative and no positive blood, and
Speaker 1: one of the ways that this could be achieved is
Speaker 1: by using bacteria enzymes to clip away sugars that give
Speaker 1: red blood cells their type, but it's ultimately not a
Speaker 1: very effective method. But recently this year, in fact, researchers
Speaker 1: at the University of British Columbia found two types of
Speaker 1: enzymes in the human gut biome that that can transform
Speaker 1: blood types essentially into O UH into O type blood.
Speaker 1: One converts the antigen to an amine and the other
Speaker 1: removes the antigen completely. But a lot of work remains
Speaker 1: to be done in this area before anything like a
Speaker 1: human test UH this would be possible, but it does
Speaker 1: show how we could very well come to a you know,
Speaker 1: a day in the future where when you give blood
Speaker 1: that blood is then can then be altered so that
Speaker 1: it can be more broadly used. Now we alluded to
Speaker 1: this earlier, but there are also tons of just edge
Speaker 1: cases where things get more interesting and more complicated than
Speaker 1: the blood type groups we've been talking about so far.
Speaker 1: Like there is what's known I think is like the
Speaker 1: Bombay blood type group where UH this is a relatively
Speaker 1: isolated phenomenon, but UM, but people who are not type
Speaker 1: A B A b or oh, and can only receive
Speaker 1: blood from each other. All right, On that note, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into some blood myths. Than all right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, you know, we started off this episode
Speaker 1: talking about vampires drinking blood, and we touched on the
Speaker 1: idea of vampires being sort of like wine connoisseurs. So
Speaker 1: what if you had an elder nos Ferato style vampire
Speaker 1: holding up a goblet of blood and you know, sniffs it,
Speaker 1: SIPs it, and then starts just uh, you know, ranting
Speaker 1: about a raving about how oh you can tell that
Speaker 1: this one, this one came from a hunter, some came
Speaker 1: from a you know, a fierce lover. Uh, and I
Speaker 1: can taste it. This has notes of big Mac, notes
Speaker 1: of barbecue sauce. But getting into this idea though that
Speaker 1: that blood could in any way inform the vampire about
Speaker 1: the personality of the individual that it came from. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that would seem to get into into supernatural
Speaker 1: aspects about blood for sure. And yet well we also
Speaker 1: see this idea, you know, moving among the living in
Speaker 1: our real world. Uh, this idea that personality is somehow
Speaker 1: tied to blood type. Yeah, it's a somewhat popular form
Speaker 1: of personality assessment in Japan these days that's based on
Speaker 1: blood types. So in some Japanese magazines and TV shows
Speaker 1: and stuff, you'll find what are essentially blood type horoscopes,
Speaker 1: or for how about this bood type relationship compatibility charts,
Speaker 1: like if you know you to figure out if you've
Speaker 1: met the person who's right for you, look up their
Speaker 1: blood type on this chart and see how it correlates
Speaker 1: with yours. Uh. And this is all predicated on the
Speaker 1: belief that blood types concern more than just the proteins
Speaker 1: and antibodies and stuff in your blood, but that they
Speaker 1: actually determine important aspects of your personality, much like the
Speaker 1: zodiac signs in Western astrology. Um. And though I think
Speaker 1: some Western characterizations of this folk belief maybe overstating its
Speaker 1: importance in modern Japanese culture, the popularity of books in
Speaker 1: Japan giving life advice based on blood type indicates that
Speaker 1: this is at least a somewhat or pretty popular belief.
Speaker 1: I guess it's always hard, Like I was trying to
Speaker 1: find a survey that had good numbers on this, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything that was very well sourced in English.
Speaker 1: But I guess it's always kind of hard to determine
Speaker 1: things like this anyway, because even if you ask people like, well,
Speaker 1: do you believe in uh, you know, astrology and the
Speaker 1: zodiac signs predicting your personality or do you believe in
Speaker 1: blood types predicting personality? I always kind of wonder what
Speaker 1: stuff like this like to what extend do people really
Speaker 1: believe in it? Like with astrology, I think there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who do it, who participate in it,
Speaker 1: who are who sort of believe in it, maybe half ironically,
Speaker 1: but but they wouldn't say, take the advice of an
Speaker 1: astrologer over the advice of their doctor. Yeah, we got
Speaker 1: into this a little bit when we talked about the
Speaker 1: Chinese zodiac on a past episode of the show UH
Speaker 1: with with some of like the birth rate spikes than
Speaker 1: one sees in the auspicious year of the dragon. And
Speaker 1: I remember some of the author's writing on this. We're
Speaker 1: pointing to not, you know, not a situation where we
Speaker 1: had like a bunch of really hardcore um you know,
Speaker 1: Chinese zodiac enthusiast in these Chinese communities outside of mainland
Speaker 1: China where the the where the research was conducted. But
Speaker 1: rather it was the idea that you had the younger
Speaker 1: UH individuals with more of a casual acquaintance, more casual
Speaker 1: knowledge of the DIAC. They were just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to make a big life decision, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of information coming at you, and you're probably
Speaker 1: getting second and third opinions and maybe get that fourth
Speaker 1: opinion from the zodiac, and all things being equal, maybe
Speaker 1: you give into that right that you can kind of
Speaker 1: that you can kind of engage with it and kind
Speaker 1: of let it partially guides you, even if you're not
Speaker 1: a die hard believer, or even maybe if you wouldn't
Speaker 1: even admit to believing. I don't know, I do not
Speaker 1: think by the way, I mean, we should go ahead
Speaker 1: and say this, there is any good evidence that personality
Speaker 1: traits are strongly or even moderately correlated with blood types.
Speaker 1: There may be a small number of extremely weak correlations,
Speaker 1: but even that seems uncertain. I was just looking at
Speaker 1: one study by Kingo Nawata called no relationship between blood
Speaker 1: type and personality evidence from a large scale evidence from
Speaker 1: large scale surveys in Japan and the US. In the
Speaker 1: Japanese Journal of Psychology in two thousand and fourteen. The
Speaker 1: author here writes that the relationship between personality and the
Speaker 1: A B O blood type is popular in Japan, but
Speaker 1: there has previously been no empirical substantiation for the belief,
Speaker 1: and so this study is a secondary analysis of data
Speaker 1: collected for more than ten thousand American and Japanese subjects
Speaker 1: in the years two thousand four and two thousand five,
Speaker 1: and of sixty eight personality traits or items assessed, there
Speaker 1: was no significant difference between blood group types for sixty
Speaker 1: five of those sixty eight traits, and I guess small
Speaker 1: effects observed for the other three, which could still turn
Speaker 1: out to be errors. So basically, at best, the author
Speaker 1: rights quote blood type explained less than zero point three
Speaker 1: percent of total variants in personality. These results showed the
Speaker 1: non relevance of blood type for personality. So the bottom
Speaker 1: line is that the relationship between blood type and personality
Speaker 1: seems to be somewhere within the range of extremely weak
Speaker 1: to non existent. And yet you will find plenty of
Speaker 1: popular books on this subject. You'll find websites that offer
Speaker 1: you know, guides, I've on stuff even in English. I
Speaker 1: guess uh, for helping people get acquainted with Japanese culture
Speaker 1: and showing you know, stuff about like blood type compatibility
Speaker 1: between different personalities. I guess we'll refer to that more
Speaker 1: in a minute. But apparently much of the interest in
Speaker 1: blood type personality stuff comes from a series of books
Speaker 1: beginning in the nineteen seventies by a Japanese journalist and
Speaker 1: named Massa Hico Nomi. And this was not a guy
Speaker 1: with any scientific credentials, by the way, but there are
Speaker 1: a ton of books by different authors on this subject.
Speaker 1: Apparently up until the present day, this remains sort of
Speaker 1: a popular genre of life advice, you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to things like life advice and and and ultimately
Speaker 1: some of the more supernatural, uh, you know, things we
Speaker 1: turned to be at a you know, astrology or something else.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, a lot of it is just
Speaker 1: coming from this idea that you know, people, I think
Speaker 1: you know, you just feel paralyzed by choice. You need
Speaker 1: something to guide you be at the stars or the
Speaker 1: secrets in your blood or whatever is being you know,
Speaker 1: related to you. And and yeah, I mean I understand
Speaker 1: that it could feel it can feel liberating to have
Speaker 1: have something tell you you know what you should do,
Speaker 1: or to just sort of back up some sort of
Speaker 1: core belief about yourself. I think there's another thing at
Speaker 1: work here that lines up perfectly with that, and I'll
Speaker 1: come back to it in just a minute. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to look specifically, like, well, what are the blood
Speaker 1: types believed to be correlated with? Like if you believe
Speaker 1: in this, what what does it tell you about yourself? Uh?
Speaker 1: It seems complicated and somewhat variable, Like I was finding
Speaker 1: different descriptions of the blood type personalities that didn't seem
Speaker 1: to exactly match up with each other. Though I find
Speaker 1: this is the same thing when I look at personality
Speaker 1: assessments due to the due to the zodiac signs and astrology. Um.
Speaker 1: But according to a BBC article I was reading by
Speaker 1: Ruth Evans on the subject, UH just gives a list
Speaker 1: of examples. Quote. According to popular belief in Japan, type
Speaker 1: a's are sensitive, perfectionists and good team players, but over anxious.
Speaker 1: Type OH is there curious and generous but stubborn. A
Speaker 1: B is our ard but mysterious and unpredictable, and type
Speaker 1: b is are cheerful but eccentric, individualistic and selfish. Um
Speaker 1: And also to add to that roughly fort of people
Speaker 1: in Japan are Type A, about thirty percent er Type OH,
Speaker 1: about twenty percent er Type B, and about ten percent
Speaker 1: or Type A B. I also found a chart for
Speaker 1: blood types with positive traits and negative traits correlated here
Speaker 1: from a website called Tofugu, which I think is like
Speaker 1: a It's an English language website for people who want to, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe travel to Japan and learn about Japanese culture, and
Speaker 1: it's sharing a bunch of stuff here like it says
Speaker 1: that people with blood type A, uh, they're positive traits
Speaker 1: are that they're earnest in their neat but they're negative
Speaker 1: traits are that they are stubborn and they're anxious. People
Speaker 1: with blood type OH, here you go, Robert. You are
Speaker 1: easy going and you've got leadership ability. Well, I think
Speaker 1: I have one of those things, not the second one.
Speaker 1: But you're also insensitive and un punctual. I think I'm
Speaker 1: very sensitive and I'm semi punctual, So yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that lines up with me at all. But it
Speaker 1: also says, uh, Type B here is supposed to be
Speaker 1: passionate and creative, but also selfish and uncooperative, and type
Speaker 1: A B is talented and composed, but eccentric and two faced.
Speaker 1: That sounds really negative now, but but then again we
Speaker 1: also have to look at the ratio, at least the
Speaker 1: presented ratio that one finds in Japan. So this probably
Speaker 1: becomes a situation where if you have blood types occurring
Speaker 1: at certain percentages within a given culture, then you can
Speaker 1: also match that up with social norms in a given culture.
Speaker 1: And since a B is amounting to just ten here,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you can go ahead and say that those
Speaker 1: are the eccentric and the two faced people for such
Speaker 1: a small section of society anyway, they're the artsy weirdos,
Speaker 1: and and so you might think, well, okay with that
Speaker 1: more or less lines up. So the thing that I
Speaker 1: detect in this um pretty much exactly the same way
Speaker 1: that I detected in uh in astrology generally, is that
Speaker 1: there's a good bit of the forror effect to work here. Now,
Speaker 1: we did a whole episode about the four or effect
Speaker 1: a few years back, and I remember very thinking very
Speaker 1: fondly of that one. I think that was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. But in short, this is a psychological phenomenon
Speaker 1: in which people have the tendency to interpret vague general
Speaker 1: assessments and predictions as specific and highly accurate statements about themselves. Right,
Speaker 1: so you can say something that would apply to almost anybody,
Speaker 1: saying like, you know, oh, it turns out people with
Speaker 1: your blood type are it can be sometimes insensitive, but
Speaker 1: also are passionate about whatever. You know, Like, give a
Speaker 1: list of characteristics and everybody will just say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's me. How do they know so much about me? Uh?
Speaker 1: This was demonstrated in this original experiment by this American
Speaker 1: psychologist named bertram For when he had his students take
Speaker 1: a personality test and then he later handed back the
Speaker 1: quote results of their test and asked the students to
Speaker 1: rate how specific and accurate the characterizations from the results
Speaker 1: were to them individually, and for the most part of
Speaker 1: the students were like, wow, yes, this is really describing me.
Speaker 1: In fact, for had handed back the exact same personality
Speaker 1: assessments to every student in the class, and there was
Speaker 1: no correlation between their answers on the test and the
Speaker 1: results they got. Obviously this probably led to lots of
Speaker 1: nervous laughter, but I think this certainly rings true. I mean,
Speaker 1: people are so hungry for personality tests and stuff. We
Speaker 1: we have a natural eagerness to interpret vague general statements
Speaker 1: as applying specifically to us in particular and being like,
Speaker 1: yoh yeah, that is me. They got me. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and probably more so than ever with the sort of
Speaker 1: online live so many of us lead, you know, we
Speaker 1: want without actual personal interaction with someone, we want we
Speaker 1: want something to tell us. That's some sort of feedback mechanism.
Speaker 1: And so then when you're old, oh well, your negative
Speaker 1: traits are that you're insensitive and your unpunctual, you may
Speaker 1: be inclined into instead of saying, oh, well I'm actually sensitive,
Speaker 1: you know, um, screw off, you're gonna say, well, wait,
Speaker 1: in what ways am I insensitive? Like there's one right there.
Speaker 1: I just remembered one sort of thing. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what Bertram for said. So he was assessing these results
Speaker 1: he found and he said, you know, what's going on
Speaker 1: here he thinks is a combination of what he calls
Speaker 1: universal validity and subjective validation, or I think he called
Speaker 1: it personal validation, but more recent research calls it subjective validation.
Speaker 1: And basically this means that as for rights, the universal
Speaker 1: validity trade is that quote, virtually every psychological trait can
Speaker 1: be observed in some degree in everyone. So like any
Speaker 1: psychological statement you could make, you can find examples in
Speaker 1: your own autobiography for which it's true. One of one
Speaker 1: of my my favorite examples of this. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm certainly guilty of this as well, the
Speaker 1: use of the word sociopath. Uhum. And when we've discussed
Speaker 1: sociopaths and psychopaths and what these terms actually mean on
Speaker 1: the show before, but in a general sense, there is
Speaker 1: a tendency to just throw the word around at other
Speaker 1: people but also at your own self where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, and I and my a sociopath? Was was
Speaker 1: I acting like a sociopath the other day when I
Speaker 1: did this or the other? Uh? You know, we we
Speaker 1: have this tendency to lean into those terms for you know,
Speaker 1: for either regarding ourselves or to mold our perceptions of
Speaker 1: other people to fit them. A sociopath is somebody who
Speaker 1: behaves like a sociopath most or all of the time,
Speaker 1: as opposed to you who behave like a sociopath only
Speaker 1: some of the ten percent of the time. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: But the other thing he says that's paired with this,
Speaker 1: So every psychological trait you find to some degree in
Speaker 1: almost everybody. But then he says, on top of that,
Speaker 1: there's subjective validation, which is that this is what you
Speaker 1: were just alluding to. When you search through your own
Speaker 1: autobiography and your mental picture or of yourself to judge
Speaker 1: whether a personality statement applies to you, you've been a
Speaker 1: huge number of memories and instances to draw from and
Speaker 1: no real way of judging whether a personality assessment statement
Speaker 1: applies better to you than it does to other people.
Speaker 1: So imagine if I tell you, because of your blood type,
Speaker 1: you have a tendency to be generous but also stubborn.
Speaker 1: Because of universal validity, almost anybody can think of examples
Speaker 1: of times when they were both generous and stubborn. And
Speaker 1: because of subjective validation, you'll have lots of opportunities in
Speaker 1: your memories to find examples of yourself displaying both of
Speaker 1: these traits, as well as difficulty judging whether you actually
Speaker 1: display those traits more or less than other people do.
Speaker 1: I mean, because you know more about yourself than you
Speaker 1: know about all other people, you'll probably just have the
Speaker 1: tendency to find more examples of any trait within yourself
Speaker 1: than you would normally see in others. But I think,
Speaker 1: especially if the traits are flattering, I think, but it
Speaker 1: also drives home just how if if an individual is
Speaker 1: it then too narcissism, how easy it is to feed
Speaker 1: that narcissism. And likewise, if one is given to self
Speaker 1: deprecation or just outright depression, like there's always going to
Speaker 1: be plenty of stuff to feed that as well. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: But one aspect that I think is interesting about the
Speaker 1: blood type personality myth in particular as opposed to say
Speaker 1: Western astrology or zodiac signs, is that it seems a
Speaker 1: little more biologically plausible, Like it's something about real genetic
Speaker 1: traits within the body. If blood type is a heritable
Speaker 1: biological trait, which it is, why couldn't certain aspects of
Speaker 1: personality be biologically inherited in some correlated way? Like the
Speaker 1: idea isn't inherently implausible, It just doesn't seem to be true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's leaning into the idea of
Speaker 1: the mind body connection, which is is a reality. But
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that every invocation of the mind
Speaker 1: body connection is is scientifically authentic. Sure, well, I mean
Speaker 1: there are there's evidence of some coral lation between mammalian
Speaker 1: gut flora and personality traits. So uh so, like, if
Speaker 1: that could be going on, why couldn't blood type be
Speaker 1: correlated with personality traits. It's not that it's impossible, it
Speaker 1: just does not seem to be the case. Now, another
Speaker 1: area that one will sometimes find some life advice tied
Speaker 1: up with blood type is in the domain of diet.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yep. It's been argued that different blood types
Speaker 1: benefit from different diets, and this idea was popularized in
Speaker 1: the book Eat Right for Your Type, written by naturopath
Speaker 1: Peter di Atamo. So basically it draws on this idea
Speaker 1: that like each blood type is kind of it kind
Speaker 1: of ties you to a specific archetype of of ancient
Speaker 1: human identity, which which is not true, right right, not
Speaker 1: true like our our blood types evolutionarily or traced back
Speaker 1: to our like ape like ancestors, that they go back
Speaker 1: that far. It's not it's not from like what profession
Speaker 1: your great great grandparents have, right, So Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: it's it's presented that Type a's are agrarians and they
Speaker 1: need an agrarian diet that's essentially devoid of meat, bees,
Speaker 1: are no bads who can eat meat but need to
Speaker 1: avoid wheat, corn, lentils, etcetera. A. Bees are enigmas and
Speaker 1: they just have to avoid kidney, beans, corn, beef, and chicken.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, typos are hunters and basically need a paleo diet,
Speaker 1: so limited grains, lagoons and dairy but less of protein.
Speaker 1: So that would make me a hunter. But but then again, okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, one might say, well, okay, maybe with
Speaker 1: without leaning as much on this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: these archetypes, but maybe there is still something to it,
Speaker 1: because again, our blood is our body, it's part of
Speaker 1: our body, it's part of our system. Perhaps there is
Speaker 1: some connection between different blood types and different dietary requirements.
Speaker 1: Sure could be the case it but it again does
Speaker 1: not seem to actually be the case. Right. So there
Speaker 1: there are, as far as I can tell, no studies
Speaker 1: that that back this up. Uh. There has There's been
Speaker 1: at least one study that has set out to debunk it. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fourteen study came out of the University
Speaker 1: of Toronto. They found that blood type had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it, but rather, you know, it comes down
Speaker 1: to sticking to a reasonable vegetarian and low carb diet. Now,
Speaker 1: it's only a study of one thousand, four hundred study participants,
Speaker 1: but then again, there's not a lot of research out there.
Speaker 1: This is one of the studies that does exist, and
Speaker 1: it certainly argues that there's there's nothing to this idea
Speaker 1: that diet needs to line up with your blood type. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the basis of it on the idea of like
Speaker 1: humans as certain types of like natural professions and your
Speaker 1: blood that again, that's the basis is wrong. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: on on the other hand, it's often pointed out that,
Speaker 1: you know, many people probably picked up this book, followed
Speaker 1: the dietary advice that was included, and experienced improvements in
Speaker 1: their health. Uh. And a part of it comes down
Speaker 1: to the fact that if you're if you do not
Speaker 1: have any kind of a managed diet at all, if
Speaker 1: you're perhaps eating poorly, and then you start, you know,
Speaker 1: eating a largely vegetarian diet based on your blood type,
Speaker 1: you're still going to you're gonna see a shift in
Speaker 1: your overall health because now you were following a diet,
Speaker 1: you're probably following a healthier diet. Now you might be
Speaker 1: using it, you might be employing this diet for a
Speaker 1: reason that is not scientifically validated. But the idea that
Speaker 1: you could cut down on carbs and eat more vegetables
Speaker 1: and improve your health, well, that's that's nothing. There's no
Speaker 1: superstition there. Yeah. I think I was reading one article
Speaker 1: that said that some research on this just found that
Speaker 1: everybody should follow the blood type a diet or whatever,
Speaker 1: like it didn't have anything to do with blood type.
Speaker 1: Is just that, like some of these diets are going
Speaker 1: to be better than others. Yeah, but but again we
Speaker 1: have to come back to the fact that we can
Speaker 1: you can definitely see why this idea is appealing. Like,
Speaker 1: there is this idea that there is a there's essentially
Speaker 1: a code in your blood, there's a secret language in
Speaker 1: your blood. And now that we know that language, we can,
Speaker 1: you know, we can better prepare for our personality, for
Speaker 1: our we can better choose a diet based on this information.
Speaker 1: But it's not really the case. I think the idea
Speaker 1: of diets tailored to an individual person and not not
Speaker 1: just the same diet for everybody, that there is something
Speaker 1: to that, but again, not that it has anything to
Speaker 1: do with blood type, right, I mean, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a host of issues there too. I mean, people are
Speaker 1: gonna have different allergies obviously that are going to come
Speaker 1: into play. Um uh, you know, which is again just
Speaker 1: comes down to the complexity of our of our immune
Speaker 1: systems for the most part. But imagine this were true
Speaker 1: and impar it with what you were talking about earlier
Speaker 1: about technologies to change blood types. This would be leading
Speaker 1: obviously to a future where everybody is trying to get
Speaker 1: the Would it be cosmetic surgery, the elective surgery to
Speaker 1: transform their blood into the pastry group? Thoh yeah, well
Speaker 1: that would be a step beyond even what because I
Speaker 1: believe the research I was looking at was talking about
Speaker 1: changing blood after it has been removed. But again, as
Speaker 1: long as we're you know, cranking the time machine forward,
Speaker 1: I imagine, I imagine somebody is probably speculated on a
Speaker 1: time when you could you could make those alterations to
Speaker 1: a human being as well. So I guess it'd be
Speaker 1: easier just to change the blood, right, I mean, I guess,
Speaker 1: I don't know how would you want it? If you
Speaker 1: were doing you're sending a crew out to another planet
Speaker 1: on a lengthy space uh a journey, would you want
Speaker 1: everybody to have the same blood type? Would you want
Speaker 1: an array of blood types? My guess is that blood
Speaker 1: types would be a fairly low priority when selecting the crew.
Speaker 1: That's a boring answer, unless you're going to the Planet
Speaker 1: of the Vampires. Oh, what a great movie, in which
Speaker 1: case it could become a factor. Though I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Did that film actually have vampires in it? Or are
Speaker 1: they more zombies? There's sort of vampires. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: had these uh, these spirits inhabit. Oh. Man, what a
Speaker 1: great movie. That movie's got killer cost of costumes are
Speaker 1: the main thing I remember. Now you can watch the
Speaker 1: movie on mute and it's almost as good. Is that
Speaker 1: Mario Baba? Yeah? I think I Actually we just watched
Speaker 1: another Mario Boba movie last night. Yeah, we watched Black Sunday.
Speaker 1: You know that one. I know of it. I've seen
Speaker 1: It's got that very distinctive cover art, but I've never
Speaker 1: seen it. Oh, you should see it sometimes. Nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: It's black and white, super creepy, very unusual to see
Speaker 1: a black and white movie from as early as it was.
Speaker 1: That's as gruesome and gory as it is, but in
Speaker 1: a good way. I would say, pretty big thumbs up
Speaker 1: to Black Sunday. It's it's creepy and also funny. It's
Speaker 1: got a it's got this great professor character who just
Speaker 1: goes about smashing things, Like goes into an old ruin
Speaker 1: and there's a wind blowing through some organ pipes and
Speaker 1: he just smashes them with his cane and he smashes
Speaker 1: a tombstone. Well, speaking of smashing tombstones, I think it's
Speaker 1: time to close this episode out. Okay, So I'm really
Speaker 1: it's also kind of surprised that we were able to
Speaker 1: do a vampire episode. Every time we do a vampire
Speaker 1: themed episode, I feel like, like that's it. We've exhausted
Speaker 1: the vampire possibility. Is nothing else we can cover that's
Speaker 1: even vampire flavored. I really enjoyed our vampire Clinic episodes
Speaker 1: last year. Those were good. Yeah. Yeah, I mean every
Speaker 1: time we we we dip back in to the vampire content,
Speaker 1: it's always it's always rewarding. But this one kind of
Speaker 1: took me by surprise. Uh. It was suggested that we
Speaker 1: do something on blood types, and then I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's got to be vampire them and here we are. Wait,
Speaker 1: who suggested it? My wife suggested it? Okay, yeah, she
Speaker 1: was I was like, I don't know where we're going
Speaker 1: to record next week. We we gotta pick one of
Speaker 1: these Halloween topics. And she was like, oh, we should
Speaker 1: do blood types, and I like, well, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: true blood vampires, Halloween. It's perfect fit. And so there
Speaker 1: you have it. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everybody
Speaker 1: out there, because you all have blood, you all have
Speaker 1: experience with your blood, thoughts about your blood. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have exposure to um blood type based diets, blood type
Speaker 1: based personality tests. You've all bathed in blood at some
Speaker 1: point and and in doing so noted the like the
Speaker 1: weird coagulations of the blood right, and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: well they mixed. I requested, specifically requested on all a
Speaker 1: B bath and they gave me a little bit of
Speaker 1: A and a little bit of B. It's not the
Speaker 1: same thing, people, It's not the same thing of a vampire.
Speaker 1: Can tell uh. Also, maybe you've had a blood transfusion.
Speaker 1: You'd like to tell us about that as well. As always,
Speaker 1: you can find us in the normal places. And if
Speaker 1: you want to support the show, the best thing you
Speaker 1: can do is to rate and review stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. Wherever you have the power to do so,
Speaker 1: and be sure to subscribe to Invention as well. That's
Speaker 1: our other podcast. It is a journey through human techno history,
Speaker 1: one invention at a time, which thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart
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