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 night clown
Speaker 1: doors open at midnight and we let in only the
Speaker 1: juiciest mortal party goers who appease your diabolical thirst. Yes,
Speaker 1: we offer seductive lounges, blood bath dance floors, and people
Speaker 1: dancing in cages. So many people dancing in cages, we
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: herd by blood type for your convenience. At Blute, you
Speaker 1: will feast in the certainty that all human partiers and
Speaker 1: our medievalist to prove thrown room are Type A B
Speaker 1: and our foam dance party room runs on type old
Speaker 1: negative exclusively guarantee. So don'tly blood chance club flood. Look
Speaker 1: for us on Vampire You help, and don't forget to
Speaker 1: leave a review. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey you,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, it's still October.
Speaker 1: That means we're partying. That's right. It's Halloween, and Halloween
Speaker 1: means blood. It also means vampires. As I think everyone
Speaker 1: probably got the idea from from the title this episode
Speaker 1: and from the cold open that we just inflicted upon you.
Speaker 1: You know, what I was just wondering is whether in
Speaker 1: the month of October people actually, like in the industry,
Speaker 1: you can see a spike in demand for Caro syrup
Speaker 1: or general you know, corn syrup products and and red
Speaker 1: food coloring, is the demand for fake blood enough to
Speaker 1: make a dent in an otherwise massive agricultural or industrial
Speaker 1: food product. Well, I mean it depends. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of po're just gonna buy a bottle of fake blood.
Speaker 1: They're not going to bother to mix their own. I
Speaker 1: guess that's true. You know, I bet mixing your own
Speaker 1: is cheaper though. Oh I'm sure it is. But not
Speaker 1: everybody has the skill to create a you know, a
Speaker 1: good batch of Kensington gore. Uh. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I was trying to make fake blood
Speaker 1: and I did it by mixing red food coloring with water.
Speaker 1: And that was how I discovered that blood is thick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's far better just to shoot it all
Speaker 1: in black and white and use chocolate syrup. But even
Speaker 1: that gets a little little little pricy, I imagine, And
Speaker 1: also it's gonna know, just attract a bunch of ants.
Speaker 1: But yeah, when you think Halloween, you think monsters, you
Speaker 1: think vampires, and of course you think blood. Now, blood
Speaker 1: hasn't really changed in the course of human history, but
Speaker 1: our understanding of blood has. Blood Letting used to be
Speaker 1: a lot more common, right, yeah. Uh, and sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: vampire tails change to reflect some of the new ideas
Speaker 1: regarding blood. Oh yeah, Like I'm sure you can see
Speaker 1: vampire lore being affected by, say that the four humor
Speaker 1: theory when that was in vogue, like the idea you
Speaker 1: could have a sanguine personality that might be caused by
Speaker 1: an excess of blood in the body. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: that makes them specially juicy targets for vampires or something
Speaker 1: that you're gonna mean, there's like there are there are
Speaker 1: four different vampires for each of the humors, right, oh right,
Speaker 1: so you get the black bile vampire and the worst
Speaker 1: kind of vampire to be because it's so bitter. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the ideas of what blood is may change, But of
Speaker 1: course there's first of all, the simple notion that blood
Speaker 1: is food. Various human cultures include the consumption of animal
Speaker 1: blood in one form or another in their cuisine. Blood
Speaker 1: sausage is one example of that. Blood tofu and in
Speaker 1: certain Chinese cuisines is another example. Never heard of this
Speaker 1: 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 share 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 bloodline flowing
Speaker 1: through the centuries. Um. I do have to say, I
Speaker 1: love a creative blood color, and some 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 Klingons had
Speaker 1: had 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 AA 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, you'll 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: I'd 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 style blood bags.
Speaker 1: I guess he drinks those in order to not have
Speaker 1: to kill people because he's good. Oh man, Forever Night.
Speaker 1: I never watched Forever Night, but it's one of those
Speaker 1: Canadian series where a lot of times I'll watch another
Speaker 1: Canadian series and I'll look it up and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this person is from Forever Night. Forever Night is the
Speaker 1: like the beating heart at the center of Canadian drama
Speaker 1: from that period of time. Yeah, I mean I never
Speaker 1: saw that much of it, but in the episodes I
Speaker 1: saw because he's a good guy. He doesn't drink from
Speaker 1: next he drinks from bags. There's um there's a Tales
Speaker 1: from the Crypto episode that called the Reluctant Vampire that
Speaker 1: started Malcolm McDowell as as the titular Reluctant Vampire and
Speaker 1: also had just an all star cast. Of course, like
Speaker 1: all those episodes, just an embarrassment of riches generally squandered
Speaker 1: on some sort of in a sappy, bad taste kind
Speaker 1: of plot. But this was this episodes pretty good. But
Speaker 1: in that one he's depending on a blood bank as well.
Speaker 1: But then occasionally like meeting real live hosts to prey upon,
Speaker 1: and he ends up asking them a lot of questions about,
Speaker 1: you know, if they had dental surgery recently, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But but he he never asked them about
Speaker 1: their actual blood type, dental surgery. Wait, like he fears
Speaker 1: the amalgam in their teeth or something like they might
Speaker 1: have silver and if he just needs to have a
Speaker 1: good you know, pacent you know, biomedical history before he
Speaker 1: uses them as his prey. Fair enough, now, of course,
Speaker 1: the the HBO series True Blood features vampires that have
Speaker 1: a clear preference when it comes to blood type and
Speaker 1: they use the synthetic blood product that's labeled and bottled
Speaker 1: called true Blood, which is in the show available in
Speaker 1: in different types, so you can get your oh negative
Speaker 1: true blood bottle you if you prefer a B, they
Speaker 1: have a B as well. Oh so all the I
Speaker 1: haven't seen true Blood, but all these vampires are of
Speaker 1: the Forever Night type where they don't drink from p all.
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
Speaker 1: cast and Dennis O'Hare in particular was a real standout
Speaker 1: playing this character who was the King of Mississippi. Stephen
Speaker 1: Root also showed up at one point and it was great.
Speaker 1: Steven Roots wonderful. Yeah. Um, there's another movie at this
Speaker 1: time that I ran across that was interesting that invokes
Speaker 1: blood Types nine the Return of Doctor X. No. I
Speaker 1: I was not even familiar with this at all because
Speaker 1: it stars Humphrey Bogart as an evil doctor yeah, who's
Speaker 1: been brought back to life because this is a sequel,
Speaker 1: uh in this in this movie is brought back to
Speaker 1: life with synthetic blood, and he has to find TYPO
Speaker 1: victims and drain their blood and use it in order
Speaker 1: to stay alive because his syn synthetic blood cannot replenish itself.
Speaker 1: This 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 well, I don't know. You might say that he
Speaker 1: has 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 of the
Speaker 1: Sierra Mare. I guess you could say also, I think
Speaker 1: Bogart actually makes a great villain, and I wish you
Speaker 1: had seen him as a villain more often. So I
Speaker 1: want to see this. Yeah, and now, of course Dr
Speaker 1: X is no typical vampire. Generally, the you know, the
Speaker 1: models very much parasitic in nature. Perhaps a vampire can
Speaker 1: taste the difference amid blood types in the same manner
Speaker 1: that a wine connoisseur can taste things in the wine
Speaker 1: that others can't, or at least can, you know, claims
Speaker 1: to have that ability. I love you. 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
Speaker 1: um don't I mean, I don't even know that what
Speaker 1: extended was a true study was just kind of a
Speaker 1: guy who got your exercise with wine experts, like tricking
Speaker 1: them into saying one wine was another and and and
Speaker 1: so forth. But I think there's I'd like to to
Speaker 1: give the topic due diligence sometime and really get into
Speaker 1: like because sometimes the you know, the idea of priming
Speaker 1: and you know, bringing in some of prior knowledge to
Speaker 1: your experience of the wine. Uh, you see people talk
Speaker 1: about that is if that's a you know, a negative,
Speaker 1: you know, But I mean that's part of your appreciation
Speaker 1: of any kind of food product or or certainly a
Speaker 1: wine is knowing where it came from and making connections,
Speaker 1: and if some of the connections or maybe partially imagined
Speaker 1: or exaggerated based on your prior knowledge. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's necessarily a bad thing at all. Have you been
Speaker 1: to any of these places that do wine style tasting
Speaker 1: notes but for oysters, Um, yes, I have. I'm all
Speaker 1: in on that. When I have the oyster, I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: I take yes, that's right, salted melon. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the cases like that, they're providing me with this the
Speaker 1: specific terminology and descriptive language that I don't have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, regarding oysters or or certainly wine or what
Speaker 1: have you. And again and then I can I can
Speaker 1: look for those things in my my taste sensation that
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing right now. Once they give you the words
Speaker 1: for it, you can kind of find it in the
Speaker 1: sensation void With With most cases of fictional vampires, though, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're I think we can we can assume that, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they could taste some sort of difference in the
Speaker 1: blood type. You know, they're essentially parasitic. They're they're digesting
Speaker 1: the blood now, and since they're digesting the blood, you
Speaker 1: know it's not gonna matter, um you know what kind
Speaker 1: of what type of blood it is, because they're digestive
Speaker 1: system is going to break down all those troublesome proteins.
Speaker 1: But then again, I don't think I've ever seen outside
Speaker 1: of doctor X here, I don't think I've encountered a
Speaker 1: vampire or vampire like creation that can only use one
Speaker 1: particular blood type. Well, if you imagine vampire physiology a
Speaker 1: little bit different, like you're saying that they just use
Speaker 1: a normal style digestive system, break it down for the
Speaker 1: nutrition in it. What if it's that the vampire drinks
Speaker 1: blood in order to have blood, So like when the
Speaker 1: vampire drinks blood, they're essentially getting a blood transfusion. In
Speaker 1: that case, maybe the vampire would need, in fact to
Speaker 1: have a compatibility test for the right kind of blood
Speaker 1: because drinking the wrong kind of blood could give them
Speaker 1: an immune response. Yeah, that would I think that could
Speaker 1: make sense because it also would would line up with
Speaker 1: some of these descriptions from folklore where they would dig
Speaker 1: up the body of the vampire and it would be
Speaker 1: just just just thick and bloated with blood, like every
Speaker 1: you know, all its entire all of its flesh is
Speaker 1: just just completely ballooned up with the stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: you're saying that's the swelling of the allergic reaction. Yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: so maybe that's the that's the explanation. Well, maybe we
Speaker 1: should get into how blood types actually work, because I
Speaker 1: realized not too long ago that this is something I
Speaker 1: should know, and I actually didn't, so I had to
Speaker 1: go and read up about it. Yeah, it's it's easy
Speaker 1: to go through life without knowing the explanation for it,
Speaker 1: and just and hopefully just knowing what your blood type is,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily what that means. Right, Well, should we
Speaker 1: take a break first and then come back and talk
Speaker 1: about the blood type basics. Let's do it. Thank thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, all right. So, if you know your blood type,
Speaker 1: or if you've seen blood types listed before, you generally
Speaker 1: will have seen a letter followed by a plus or
Speaker 1: minus sign and that letter is probably going to be
Speaker 1: A or B or a B or Oh. But so okay,
Speaker 1: you know they're at least several different types of blood,
Speaker 1: but you might not know what they do. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are actually many different blood type families. I think
Speaker 1: the known number of human blood group systems is now
Speaker 1: somewhere in the forties. So there are tons of different
Speaker 1: ways of classifying and grouping blood. But the most common
Speaker 1: and most important blood group types to discuss are the A, B,
Speaker 1: O blood group system and what's known as the R
Speaker 1: H factor. Now you've heard of these before, but what
Speaker 1: do they mean? Simply put, blood type refers to which
Speaker 1: category of antigens you will find on the outside of
Speaker 1: your red blood cells, and that in turn determines how
Speaker 1: your body's immune system responds to different types of blood
Speaker 1: from other donors because of the antigens on the outside
Speaker 1: of their red blood cells, and also how other people's
Speaker 1: bodies would respond to your blood if you if given
Speaker 1: a transfusion from you. By the way, Joe, before we
Speaker 1: go any any further, what is your blood type? I
Speaker 1: almost answered, but then I stopped. Should I reveal my
Speaker 1: blood type on air? I wonder? I'm getting flashes of
Speaker 1: some future like cyber scenario where I regret sharing this
Speaker 1: information publicly. Well, I can't think of a way people
Speaker 1: would use it against us. I can think of a
Speaker 1: way Facebook will use it against us. Okay, Well, don't
Speaker 1: have to reveal if you don't want to. You want
Speaker 1: to reveal yours, Well, I mean, I don't mind saying
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm typo negatives. Oh nice, just like the
Speaker 1: goth industrial band of the same name. Well, you also
Speaker 1: have a rare and important blood group, as we'll discuss
Speaker 1: as we go on. Yes, and we'll we'll just consider
Speaker 1: Joe's blood type to be of what blood type enigma
Speaker 1: will we'll lead into the listeners to imagine what it
Speaker 1: might be blood type question mark equal sign Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So red blood cells, we know they serve the function
Speaker 1: of traveling through the body and transporting oxygen molecules to
Speaker 1: body tissues, and they also carry away carbon dioxide. And
Speaker 1: so the outsides of the red blood cells in your
Speaker 1: body will have these little molecules on the outside of
Speaker 1: these structures made of molecules, uh that on on the
Speaker 1: top layers of these structures consist of various types of
Speaker 1: antigens that the and of course, an antigen is just
Speaker 1: something that your body's immune system can recognize as a
Speaker 1: threat and react to. And so your red blood cells
Speaker 1: can have either a antigens, be antigens both or neither.
Speaker 1: If your red blood cells just have A antigens, just
Speaker 1: these A antigen molecules on the outer layer, you have
Speaker 1: blood type A. If you have just BE antigens, you
Speaker 1: have blood type B. If you have both your blood
Speaker 1: type A B, and if you have neither, you are
Speaker 1: 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, happen 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 wiring a bit.
Speaker 1: That way, he can find out whose family and who's
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 were kind of like defense
Speaker 1: drones latching on to certain types of antigens that they
Speaker 1: encounter things in your body that seem like they might
Speaker 1: be some bit of dangerous foreign material in the blood.
Speaker 1: And of course the main thing you'd be worried about,
Speaker 1: there are some kinds of germs. Right now, generally we
Speaker 1: don't have antibodies that will attack our own red blood cells.
Speaker 1: So if you have blood type A, meaning you've got
Speaker 1: these 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 B 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 O 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 sneeches, right. I mean this means that when
Speaker 1: you donate or receive a blood transfusion, you don't always
Speaker 1: just need to match the same type between donor and recipient.
Speaker 1: There are these inherent asymmetries and who can receive what
Speaker 1: types of blood. For example, if you have a B blood,
Speaker 1: you can receive blood from any other type. You can
Speaker 1: receive A blood, you can receive B blood, you can
Speaker 1: receive A B blood or OH blood. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because you don't in your blood plasma have antibodies to
Speaker 1: attack any of those other types of red blood cells.
Speaker 1: And for this reason, type A B is the universal
Speaker 1: recipient class. But if you donate A B blood, that
Speaker 1: blood can only go to a recipient who is also
Speaker 1: a BE because that recipient otherwise is going to have
Speaker 1: immune system reaction to one of one or both of
Speaker 1: those antigens on the outside of those cells. Now, on
Speaker 1: the flip side, type OH blood, which has neither A
Speaker 1: nor BE antigens, is the universal donor class. You can
Speaker 1: give type OH 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. They're always kind of like
Speaker 1: 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. It's
Speaker 1: not that you're octor is of secret vampire right and
Speaker 1: just needs a taste before things get going right. But
Speaker 1: there may be times when somebody needs a blood transfusion
Speaker 1: and there's none of their own blood on hand to
Speaker 1: give them, so they need blood from a bank, they
Speaker 1: need blood from a donor, from a reserve of pre
Speaker 1: 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 recess factor r
Speaker 1: H factor after the recess monkeys from which it was
Speaker 1: originally studied and isolated. Uh, and it works sort of
Speaker 1: the same way. Basically, there are only two options with
Speaker 1: the RH factor factor. Either you have these proteins, meaning
Speaker 1: your r H 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: we have to be careful about overstating that, not that
Speaker 1: I'm gold, because obviously I don't want people to harvest
Speaker 1: my blood without my consent. I do try and give
Speaker 1: give blood, um, you know, a lot when whenever there's
Speaker 1: a blood drive and I'm allowed, you know, to do so.
Speaker 1: But but but also nobody out there who is like
Speaker 1: a B needs to to feel like, oh, well, my
Speaker 1: blood is not as valuable. I'm gonna sit this one
Speaker 1: out like they don't really need my blood because I'm
Speaker 1: not a 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, and maybe all blood is delicious? Uh?
Speaker 1: Should we? So let's let's talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: The blood serum clumping test we mentioned earlier. Now, the
Speaker 1: Austrian immunologist and pathologist Carl land Steiner, 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 it 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 of surgery. But the the excellent
Speaker 1: cinemax series from Soderberg the Nick there's one scene in
Speaker 1: which they attempt a blood transfusion um to save a
Speaker 1: patient 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 you 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 think they begin to realize, yeah, there's some there's
Speaker 1: 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 that must be happening in these cases where
Speaker 1: you 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 are 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 Lensteiner discovered several
Speaker 1: of those as well, such as like m in and
Speaker 1: P factors, And he was also involved in research decades
Speaker 1: 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 O group. Uh. And Lnsteiner
Speaker 1: eventually won the Nobel Prize for his research, which was
Speaker 1: essential to making blood transfusions safe and commonplace. So this
Speaker 1: was like very important work in the history of medicine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is one of those technical 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 history 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. This is still to some extent
Speaker 1: and unsolved mystery and human evolution, but I think, at
Speaker 1: least as far as I've read, there are some indications
Speaker 1: that the evolved differences in blood types may have something
Speaker 1: to do with different pressures related to immune response and
Speaker 1: protection against disease. Yeah, that's that's that's what I'm getting
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 uh 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 want or why,
Speaker 1: And it's because of some local parasite that people's ancestors
Speaker 1: evolved to u to resist. And so let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about parasites here. The real blood drinkers, the real dangerous vampires,
Speaker 1: uh not count Dracula, but the but the mosquitoes that
Speaker 1: drink human blood, that hunts for our blood and spread
Speaker 1: a host of deadly diseases in the process, the real vampires. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you know you may have heard before, you may
Speaker 1: have read this before, that mosquitoes prefer typo blood. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I had heard that, But once you
Speaker 1: start looking for it, you see it all over the place. Uh.
Speaker 1: And more than that, you probably read it in any
Speaker 1: number of articles in in very trustworthy publications. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's it's been widely reported. Yeah, that people with TYPEO
Speaker 1: are bitten twice as often as people with Type A,
Speaker 1: while Type BEE falls somewhere in between. Okay, so wait,
Speaker 1: you get bitten a lot by mosquitoes. I mean I do.
Speaker 1: I was been numerous times yesterday actually who researching this
Speaker 1: because I was working out on the porch and then
Speaker 1: 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, uh, A lot of these articles,
Speaker 1: though there they end up pointing to a two thousand
Speaker 1: and four study from the Journal of Medicine Etymology from
Speaker 1: two 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. This
Speaker 1: one is cited a lot. I'll come back to that
Speaker 1: in a second, but I want to point out that
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian magazine has an article about about this, and
Speaker 1: they point out that, you know, based on genes, about
Speaker 1: P will 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. Sweat. High body temperature is a big one. UH.
Speaker 1: Certain skin bacteria, ethanol excretion, and sweat due to beer consumption, yeah,
Speaker 1: pregnancy apparently as a factor, but that seems to come
Speaker 1: down to just carbon dioxide and warmth, like increased carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide and warmth, and then also dark clothing, which that's
Speaker 1: one that matches up. I found with my experience killing
Speaker 1: mosquitoes is that they'll be attracted to dark things I'm wearing.
Speaker 1: And then if I'm killing them, say in a bungalow,
Speaker 1: they're going to go to the dark corners of the
Speaker 1: bungalow to try and get away from me. Well, I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's because out on a warm day, dark
Speaker 1: clothing gets hotter. Yeah, that's true. They're attracted to heat. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: heats one of the big ones. Now, the notion that
Speaker 1: mosquitoes prefer type of blood did not hold up for long.
Speaker 1: The study was was criticized for statistical problems. Uh. Joseph
Speaker 1: conelan technical adviser of the American Mosquito Control Association, has
Speaker 1: dismissed this as a as as as not being that
Speaker 1: that big of a factor or not being a factor
Speaker 1: at all. But but you still see it decided quite
Speaker 1: a bit. But as far as I can tell, uh,
Speaker 1: based on the research here, I don't think blood type
Speaker 1: really plays into whether or not a mosquito is going
Speaker 1: to feast on your blood, or certainly it's not. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's not going to compare to the other factors
Speaker 1: that are going to dictate whether or not you're going
Speaker 1: to be fed upon. Now, on the other hand, there
Speaker 1: does seem to be evidence that people with type OH
Speaker 1: blood are protected from the most severe forms of malaria.
Speaker 1: According to a two thousand fifteen Swedish study, a protein
Speaker 1: sucree did by malarial parasites only bonds weekly with type
Speaker 1: O blood cells, but bonds strongly to A As a result,
Speaker 1: type of blood is more prominent in malaria plague regions.
Speaker 1: The researchers from the Caroline Esca Institute point out that
Speaker 1: roughly half of Nigeria's population has type of blood. And
Speaker 1: by the way, this is UH. This is how it
Speaker 1: breaks down. In the United States. According to the Red Cross,
Speaker 1: UH OH positive blood, you'll find UH forty seven percent
Speaker 1: among African Americans, thirty nine percent among Asians, thirty seven
Speaker 1: percent among Caucasians, fifty among Latino Americans, and then OH
Speaker 1: negative four percent among African Americans, one percent among Asians,
Speaker 1: eight percent among Caucasians, and four percent among Latino Americans,
Speaker 1: So having type O blood with the positive rh factor
Speaker 1: is much more common. Yes, yeah, and and certainly you
Speaker 1: see like in the the the American the African American
Speaker 1: population used, do see that significantly higher um rate of
Speaker 1: O positive blood likewise with Latino American blood as well.
Speaker 1: So I think these are some of the key statistics
Speaker 1: that people are focusing in on when they're making a
Speaker 1: case for uh, you know, the blood type having this uh,
Speaker 1: this immune factor. You know that this is the reason
Speaker 1: you find these different blood types and different human populations
Speaker 1: the result of your more recent ancestors being exposed to
Speaker 1: more malaria risk. Ye. Now, on the other hand, people
Speaker 1: with type OH blood tend to become more severely ill
Speaker 1: from cholera compared to other blood types, and according to
Speaker 1: a two thousand sixteen study from the Washington University School
Speaker 1: of Medicine, it maybe due to the way that blood
Speaker 1: type influences how strongly cholera toxin activates intestinal cells, leading
Speaker 1: to diarrhea. Oh. Yeah, I was also reading about some
Speaker 1: evidence that there may be different responses to norovirus having
Speaker 1: to do with blood types. Well that, yeah, that would
Speaker 1: make sense too. Um. I've also seen A A B
Speaker 1: and A by link to higher risk for coronary heart disease,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. I didn't look into that U super closely.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much of that is really ironed out,
Speaker 1: or or to what extent is correlation. I think type
Speaker 1: A blood is associated with greater risks for some types
Speaker 1: of cancers. Now, of course, as we stressed already, one
Speaker 1: of the most important aspects of type of blood remains
Speaker 1: that it is a universal donor, meaning that an emergence
Speaker 1: in an emergency, it can be used with the lowest
Speaker 1: risk of series reactions for all blood types. And so
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, it would be ideal to be
Speaker 1: able to transform any blood type into a universal donor,
Speaker 1: right uh. And I suppose our vampires would would very
Speaker 1: much like that as well, if they indeed prefer um
Speaker 1: oh oh negative and no positive blood. And one of
Speaker 1: the ways that this could be achieved is by using
Speaker 1: bacteria enzymes to clip away sugars that give red blood
Speaker 1: cells their type, but it's ultimately not a very effective method.
Speaker 1: But recently this year, in fact, researchers at the University
Speaker 1: of British Columbia found two types of enzymes in the
Speaker 1: human gut biome that that can transform blood types essentially
Speaker 1: into O UH into O type blood. One converts the
Speaker 1: antigen to an amine and the other removes the antigen completely.
Speaker 1: But a lot of work remains to be done in
Speaker 1: this area before anything like a human test uh this
Speaker 1: would be possible. But it does show how we could
Speaker 1: very well come to a you know, a day in
Speaker 1: the future where when you give blood that blood is
Speaker 1: then can then be altered so that it can be
Speaker 1: more broadly used. Now, we alluded to this earlier, but
Speaker 1: there are also tons of just edge cases where things
Speaker 1: get more interesting and more complicated than the blood type
Speaker 1: groups we've been talking about so far. Like there is
Speaker 1: what's known I think is like the Bombay blood type
Speaker 1: group where uh, this is a relatively isolated phenomenon but um,
Speaker 1: but people who are not type A, B, A B
Speaker 1: or OH and can only receive blood from each other.
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but when we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: get into some blood myths than all right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So you know, we started off this episode talking about
Speaker 1: vampires drinking blood, and we touched on the idea of
Speaker 1: vampires being sort of like wine connoisseurs. So what if
Speaker 1: you had an elder nos Ferato style vampire holding up
Speaker 1: a goblet of blood and you know, sniffs it, SIPs it,
Speaker 1: and then starts just uh, you know, ranting about and
Speaker 1: raving about how oh you can tell that this one,
Speaker 1: this one came from a hunter, one came from a
Speaker 1: you know, a fierce lover. Uh, and I could taste it.
Speaker 1: This has notes of big mac, notes of barbecue sauce.
Speaker 1: But getting into this idea though, that that blood could
Speaker 1: in any way inform the vampire about the personality of
Speaker 1: the individual that it came from. Uh, you know, that
Speaker 1: would seem to get into uh into supernatural aspects about
Speaker 1: blood for sure. And yet well we also see this
Speaker 1: idea of you know, moving among the living in our
Speaker 1: real world. Uh, this idea that personality is somehow tied
Speaker 1: to blood type. Yeah, it's a somewhat popular form of
Speaker 1: personality assessment in Japan these days that's based on blood types.
Speaker 1: So in some Japanese magazines and TV shows and stuff,
Speaker 1: you'll find what are essentially blood type horoscopes. Or for
Speaker 1: how about this blood type relationship compatibility charts, Like if
Speaker 1: you know, you to figure out if you've met the
Speaker 1: person who's right for you, look up their blood type
Speaker 1: on this chart and see how it correlates with yours. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is all predicated on the belief that blood
Speaker 1: types concern more than just the proteins and antibodies and
Speaker 1: stuff in your blood, but that they actually determine important
Speaker 1: aspects of your personality, much like the zodiac signs in
Speaker 1: Western astrology. Um. And though I think some Western characterizations
Speaker 1: of this folk belief maybe overstating its importance in modern
Speaker 1: Japanese culture, the popularity of books in Japan giving life
Speaker 1: advice based on blood type indicates that this is at
Speaker 1: least a somewhat or pretty popular belief. I guess it's
Speaker 1: always hard, Like I was trying to find a survey
Speaker 1: that had good numbers on this, but I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything that was very well sourced in English. But I
Speaker 1: guess it's always kind of hard to determine things like
Speaker 1: 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 extent 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 we
Speaker 1: got into this a little bit when we talked about
Speaker 1: the Chinese zodiac on a past episode of the show
Speaker 1: UH with with some of like the birth rate spikes
Speaker 1: in one sees in the auspicious year of the Dragon,
Speaker 1: and I remember some of the author's writing on this,
Speaker 1: we're pointing to not you know, not a situation where
Speaker 1: we had like a bunch of really hardcore um you know,
Speaker 1: Chinese zodiac enthusiast in these Chinese communities outside of Maitland, China,
Speaker 1: where the the where the research was conducted. But rather
Speaker 1: it was the idea that you had the younger UH
Speaker 1: individuals with more of a casual acquaintance, more casual knowledge
Speaker 1: of the zodiac. They were just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to make a big life decision and they
Speaker 1: there's a lot of information coming at you and you're
Speaker 1: probably getting second and third opinions and maybe get that
Speaker 1: fourth opinion from the zodiac, and all things being equal,
Speaker 1: maybe you give into that right that you can kind
Speaker 1: of that you can kind of engage with it and
Speaker 1: kind of let it partially guides you, even if you're
Speaker 1: not a die hard believer, or even maybe if you
Speaker 1: wouldn't even admit to believing. I don't know, I do
Speaker 1: not think by the way, I mean we should go
Speaker 1: ahead and say this, there is any good evidence that
Speaker 1: personality 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 from 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 and 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 nonexistent. And yet you will find plenty of popular
Speaker 1: books on this subject. You'll find websites that offer you
Speaker 1: know guides. I found stuff even in English. I guess
Speaker 1: uh for helping people get acquainted with Japanese culture and
Speaker 1: showing you know stuff about like blood type compatibility between
Speaker 1: different personalities. I guess we'll refer to that more in
Speaker 1: a minute. But apparently much of the interest in blood
Speaker 1: type personality stuff comes from a series of books beginning
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies by a Japanese journalist and named
Speaker 1: Massa Hico Nomi. And this was not a guy with
Speaker 1: any scientific credentials, by the way, But there are a
Speaker 1: ton of books by different authors on this subject. Apparently
Speaker 1: up until the present day, this remains sort of a
Speaker 1: popular genre of life advice, you know, when it comes
Speaker 1: to things like life advice and and and ultimately some
Speaker 1: of the more supernatural, uh, you know, things we turned
Speaker 1: to be at a you know, astrology or something else. Uh.
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 should be at the stars or
Speaker 1: the secrets in your blood or whatever is being you know,
Speaker 1: related to you. And uh and yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: understand that it can feel it can feel liberating to
Speaker 1: have 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, somewhat variable, Like I was finding different
Speaker 1: descriptions of the blood type personalities that didn't seem to
Speaker 1: exactly match up with each other. Though I find this
Speaker 1: is the same thing when I look at personality assessments
Speaker 1: 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 our curious and generous but stubborn. A
Speaker 1: B is our art but mysterious and unpredictable, and Type
Speaker 1: B is our cheerful but eccentric, individualistic and selfish. Um.
Speaker 1: And also to add to that, roughly forty of people
Speaker 1: in Japan are type A, about thirty percenter, Type OH,
Speaker 1: about twenty percenter Type B, and about ten percent or
Speaker 1: Type A B. I also found a chart for blood
Speaker 1: types with positive traits and negative traits core related 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
Speaker 1: to uh maybe travel to Japan and learn about Japanese culture,
Speaker 1: and it's sharing a bunch of stuff here. Like it
Speaker 1: says that people with blood type A, uh, they're positive
Speaker 1: traits are that they're earnest and their neat, but they're
Speaker 1: negative traits are that they are stubborn and they're anxious.
Speaker 1: People with blood type oh, here you go, Robert. You
Speaker 1: are easy going and you've got leadership ability. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I have one of those things, not the second one.
Speaker 1: But you're also insensitive and unpunctual. I think I'm very
Speaker 1: sensitive and I'm semipunctual. So yeah, I don't think that
Speaker 1: lines up with me at all. But it also says, uh,
Speaker 1: type B here is supposed to be passionate and creative,
Speaker 1: but also selfish and uncooperative, and type A B is
Speaker 1: talented and composed but eccentric and two faced. To that
Speaker 1: sounds really negative now, but but then again, we also
Speaker 1: have to look at the ratio, at least the presented
Speaker 1: ratio that one finds in Japan. So this probably becomes
Speaker 1: a situation where if you have blood types occurring at
Speaker 1: certain percentages within a given culture. Then you can also
Speaker 1: match that up with social norms in a given culture.
Speaker 1: And since a B is amounting to just ten percent here,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you can go ahead and say that those
Speaker 1: are the eccentric in 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 UH 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 Fror effect to work here. Now,
Speaker 1: we did a whole episode about the Fror effect a
Speaker 1: few years back, and I remember very thinking, very fondly
Speaker 1: of that one. I think that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: But in short, this is a psychological phenomenon in which
Speaker 1: people have the tendency to interpret vague general assessments and
Speaker 1: predictions as specific and high the accurate statements about themselves. Right,
Speaker 1: So you can say something that would apply to almost
Speaker 1: anybody saying, like, you know, oh, it turns out people
Speaker 1: with your blood type are it can be sometimes insensitive,
Speaker 1: but also are passionate about whatever you know, like give
Speaker 1: a list of characteristics and everybody will just say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's me. But 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, the
Speaker 1: students were like, wow, yes, this is really describing me.
Speaker 1: In fact, four 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, yoh,
Speaker 1: yeah that is me. They got me. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and probably more so than ever with the you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of online live so many of us lead,
Speaker 1: you know, we want without actual personal interaction with someone.
Speaker 1: We want, we want something to tell us, some sort
Speaker 1: of feedback mechanism. And so then when you're told, oh, well,
Speaker 1: your negative traits are that you're insensitive and your unpunctual,
Speaker 1: you may be inclined into instead of saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm actually sensitive, you know, um screwed 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. That sort of thing. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what bertram for said. So he was assessing these
Speaker 1: results he found and he said, you know, what's going
Speaker 1: on here he thinks is a combination of what he
Speaker 1: calls universal validity and subjective validation, or I think he
Speaker 1: called it personal validation, but more recent research calls it
Speaker 1: subjective validation. And basically this means that, as for rights,
Speaker 1: the universal validity trade is that quote, virtually every psychological
Speaker 1: trait can be observed in some degree in everyone. So
Speaker 1: like any psychological statement you could make, you can find
Speaker 1: examples in your own autobiography for which it's true. One
Speaker 1: of one of my my favorite examples of this. And
Speaker 1: I feel like, I mean, I'm certainly guilty of this
Speaker 1: as well. The misuse of the word sociopath u um,
Speaker 1: and when we've discussed sociopaths and psychopaths and what these
Speaker 1: terms actually mean on the show before. But in a
Speaker 1: general sense, there is a tendency to just throw the
Speaker 1: word around at other people, but also at your own self.
Speaker 1: We are like, oh, my goodness, and I and my
Speaker 1: sociopath was was I acting like a sociopath the other
Speaker 1: day when I did this or the other? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: we we have this tendency to lean into those terms
Speaker 1: for you know, either regarding ourselves or to mold our
Speaker 1: perceptions of other people to fit them. A sociopath is
Speaker 1: somebody who behaves like a sociopath most or all of
Speaker 1: the time, as opposed to you who behave like a
Speaker 1: sociopath only some of the time a 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 of yourself to judge whether
Speaker 1: a personality statement applies to you, You've been a huge
Speaker 1: number of memories and instances to draw from and no
Speaker 1: real way of judging whether a personality assessment statement applies
Speaker 1: better to you than it does to other people. So
Speaker 1: 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 stuff burn
Speaker 1: And because of subjective validation, you'll have lots of opportunities
Speaker 1: in your memories to find examples of yourself displaying both
Speaker 1: of these traits, as well as difficulty judging whether you
Speaker 1: actually 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: given to narcissism, how easy it is to feed that narcissism,
Speaker 1: And likewise, if one is given to self deprecation or
Speaker 1: just outright depression, Like there's always going to be plenty
Speaker 1: of stuff to feed that as well. Yeah, totally. But
Speaker 1: one aspect that I think is interesting about the blood
Speaker 1: type personality myth in particular as opposed to say Western
Speaker 1: astrology or the 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 it is a reality.
Speaker 1: But but that doesn't mean that every invocation of the
Speaker 1: mind body connection is is scientifically authentic. Sure, well, I
Speaker 1: mean there are some there's evidence of some correlation between
Speaker 1: mammalian gut flora and personality traits. So uh so, like,
Speaker 1: if that could be going on, why couldn't blood type
Speaker 1: be correlated with personality traits. It's not that it's impossible,
Speaker 1: it just does not seem to be the case. Now,
Speaker 1: another area that one will sometimes find some life advice
Speaker 1: tied 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 idea was popularized in the
Speaker 1: book Eat Right for Your Type, written by natural path
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 are 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 to halio diet,
Speaker 1: so limited grains lagoons and dairy but less of protein,
Speaker 1: so that would make me a hunter. Uh. But but
Speaker 1: then again, okay, so you know, one might say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe with without leaning as much on this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, these archetypes, but maybe there is still something
Speaker 1: to it, because again, our blood is our body. It's
Speaker 1: part of our body, it's part of our system. Perhaps
Speaker 1: there is some connection between different blood types and different
Speaker 1: dietary requirements. Sure could be the case it, but it
Speaker 1: again does not seem to actually be the case. Right.
Speaker 1: So there there are, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: no studies that that back this up. Uh. There has
Speaker 1: there's been at least one study that has set out
Speaker 1: to debunk it. Uh. Two thousand fourteen study came out
Speaker 1: of the University of Toronto. They found that blood type
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it, but rather, you know,
Speaker 1: it comes down to sticking to a reasonable vegetarian and
Speaker 1: low carb diet. Now, it's only a study of one thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred study participants, but then again, there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of research out there. This is one of the
Speaker 1: studies that does exist, and it certainly argues that there's
Speaker 1: there's nothing to this idea that diet needs to line
Speaker 1: up with your blood type. Yeah, and the basis of
Speaker 1: it on the idea of like humans as certain types
Speaker 1: of like natural professions and your blood that again, that's
Speaker 1: the basis is wrong. Yeah. Now on on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's often pointed out that, you know, many people probably
Speaker 1: picked up this book, followed the dietary advice that was included,
Speaker 1: and uh, experienced improvements in their health. Uh. And a
Speaker 1: part of that comes down to the fact that if you're,
Speaker 1: if if you do not have any kind of a
Speaker 1: managed diet at all, if you're perhaps eating poorly, and
Speaker 1: then you start, you know, eating a largely vegetarian diet
Speaker 1: based on your blood type, you're still going to you're
Speaker 1: gonna see a shift in your overall health because now
Speaker 1: you were following a diet, you're probably following a healthier diet.
Speaker 1: Now you might be using it. You might be employing
Speaker 1: this diet for a reason that is not scientificallyvalidated. But
Speaker 1: the idea that you could cut down on carbs and
Speaker 1: eat more vegetables and improve your health, well, that's that's nothing.
Speaker 1: There's no superstition there. Yeah. I think I was reading
Speaker 1: one article that said that some research on this just
Speaker 1: found that everybody should follow the blood type a diet
Speaker 1: or whatever, like it didn't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: blood type. Is just that, like some of these diets
Speaker 1: are going to be better than others. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: again we 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 of slay that are going to
Speaker 1: come into play. Um uh, you know, which is again
Speaker 1: just comes down to the complexity of our our our
Speaker 1: immune systems for the most part. But imagine this were
Speaker 1: true and impart 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? Tho oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that would be a step beyond even what because
Speaker 1: I believe the research I was looking at was talking
Speaker 1: about changing blood after it has been removed. But but
Speaker 1: then again, as long as we're you know, cranking the
Speaker 1: time machine forwards, I imagine, I imagine somebody is probably
Speaker 1: speculated on a time when you could you could make
Speaker 1: those alterations to a human being as well. Though I
Speaker 1: guess it'd be easier to change the blood, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess. I don't know. How would you want it?
Speaker 1: If you were doing you're sending a crew out to
Speaker 1: another planet on a lengthy space uh journey. Would you
Speaker 1: want everybody to have the same blood type? Would you
Speaker 1: want an array of blood types? My guess is that
Speaker 1: blood types would be a fairly low priority when selecting
Speaker 1: the crew. Sorry, that's a boring answer, unless you're going
Speaker 1: to the Planet of the Vampires. Oh what a great movie,
Speaker 1: in which case it could become a factor. Though I
Speaker 1: don't remember did that film actually have vampires in it
Speaker 1: or were they more zombies. There's sort of vampires. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it had these uh, these spirits inhabit. Oh man, what
Speaker 1: a great movie. That movie's got killer costs to costumes
Speaker 1: are the main thing. I remember. Now you can watch
Speaker 1: the movie on mute and it's almost as good. Is
Speaker 1: that Mario Baba? Yeah? I think. Actually we just watched
Speaker 1: another Mario Bava 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 u unusual to
Speaker 1: see a black and white movie from as early as
Speaker 1: it was. That's as gruesome and gory as it is,
Speaker 1: but in a good way. I would say pretty big
Speaker 1: thumbs up to Black Sunday. It's it's creepy and also funny.
Speaker 1: It's got a It's got this great professor character who
Speaker 1: just goes about smashing things, Like goes into an old
Speaker 1: ruin and there's a wind blowing through some organ pipes
Speaker 1: and he just smashes them with his cane and he
Speaker 1: smashes a tombstone. Well, speaking of smashing tombstones, I think
Speaker 1: it's time to close this episode out. Okay, Uh so,
Speaker 1: I'm really it's also kind of surprised that we were
Speaker 1: able to do a vampire episode. Every time we do
Speaker 1: a vampire themed episode, I feel like, like, that's it.
Speaker 1: We've exhausted the vampire possibility and there's nothing else we
Speaker 1: can cover that's even vampire flavored. I really enjoyed our
Speaker 1: vampire Clinic episodes last year. Those were good. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean every time we we we dip back in
Speaker 1: to the vampire content, it's always it's always rewarding. But
Speaker 1: this one kind of took me by surprise. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was suggested that we do something on blood types, and
Speaker 1: then I'm like, oh, it's got to be vampire them
Speaker 1: and here we are. Wait, who suggested it? My wife
Speaker 1: suggested it? Oh okay, yeah she was. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know where we're gonna record next week. We
Speaker 1: we gotta pick one of these Halloween topics and she
Speaker 1: was like, oh, we should do blood types and I like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's true blood vampires, Halloween. It's perfect fit. And
Speaker 1: so there you have it. Obviously, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everybody out there, because you all have blood. You
Speaker 1: all have experience with your blood, thoughts about your blood.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have exposure to um, blood type based diets,
Speaker 1: a blood type based personality tests. You've all bathed in
Speaker 1: blood at some point and and and in doing so
Speaker 1: noted the like the weird coagulations of the blood right
Speaker 1: and you realize, oh, they mixed. I requested, specifically requested
Speaker 1: on all a B bath and they gave me a
Speaker 1: little bit of A and a little bit of B.
Speaker 1: It's not the same thing, people, It's not the same thing.
Speaker 1: A vampire can tell uh. Also, maybe you've had a
Speaker 1: blood transfusion, you'd like to tell us about that as well.
Speaker 1: As always, you can find us in the normal places,
Speaker 1: And if you want to support the show, the best
Speaker 1: thing you can do is to rate and review stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind wherever you have the power to
Speaker 1: do so, and be sure to subscribe to Invention as well.
Speaker 1: That's our other podcast. It is a journey through human
Speaker 1: techno history, one invention at a time. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
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