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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't the Stuff to Blow your Mind?

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and dot Joe McCormick, and hey,

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Speaker 1: it's Halloween season. Today's episode is kind of HALLOWEENI we

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Speaker 1: also want to remind you to feature to check out

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is, uh,

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Speaker 1: the main site. That's where you find all of the podcast,

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Speaker 1: all the videos of various blog posts. And we have

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Speaker 1: a two interesting things going on this month. Monster Science,

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Speaker 1: the video series that I've been doing in the past

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Speaker 1: here is coming back these last two weeks of October

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Speaker 1: four new episodes with the sort of vhs leyden Um

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Speaker 1: horror cinema themed explorations of science. All right, so let's

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Speaker 1: get rolling with this. I want to kick off by

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Speaker 1: just asking you. It's just a very basic question here, Joe.

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Speaker 1: Do you see yourself as you eventually enter old age?

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Speaker 1: Do you see yourself drinking the blood of the young

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Speaker 1: in order to sustaining your unnatural life? M Now, are

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Speaker 1: we're talking about the blood of the young human or

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Speaker 1: the blood of any young animal? I mean, I assume

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Speaker 1: the young deman. I mean that's where the vitality is.

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Speaker 1: That's what human life force is. If I'm going to

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Speaker 1: keep my own human life force going, that's a good

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Speaker 1: place to go, right it could be. But then again,

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Speaker 1: if we follow our our magical intuitions and the history

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Speaker 1: of our practices, I think animal blood rituals have been

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Speaker 1: fairly common in human history, right, yeah, and certainly not

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Speaker 1: only animal blood rights, but even into early pseudo scientific

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Speaker 1: ideas of of taking elements from particularly virile seeming specimens

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Speaker 1: and and using those tissues in our own body. You know,

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Speaker 1: I think I would feel rude drinking the blood of

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Speaker 1: young humans. But what I might do is a kind

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Speaker 1: of mithraic ritual where I would get into some contraption

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Speaker 1: and have a bull on a grate above me and

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Speaker 1: then just bathe in its showering blood as it is butchered. Okay, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that that was that way. It's not like the direct

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Speaker 1: bathing or the direct consumption of the blood. There's a

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Speaker 1: there's a buffer, a mythic buffer zone there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And then of course you get all of the all

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Speaker 1: of the wonderful attributes to the bull, right, the strength,

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Speaker 1: the power, the virility, it's good stuff. Yeah, Or potentially

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Speaker 1: just like a bull Testies young person blood smoothie, that

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Speaker 1: that might end up being my like vampiric morning ritual

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Speaker 1: when I'm an old person. Now, Robert, obviously you brought

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Speaker 1: this up for a reason. Are are you thinking about

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Speaker 1: drinking blood anytime soon? Well? I can't help but think

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Speaker 1: about it a little bit, just based on some of

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Speaker 1: our the research we've been doing here, uh, some some

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Speaker 1: mythic research and historical research, and most importantly some modern

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Speaker 1: scientific research into the advantages of taking another individual's blood

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Speaker 1: into your own body. That that sounds like you're hedging there,

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Speaker 1: you know, so, so not necessarily always just drinking blood,

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Speaker 1: but but at least some way taking blood, taking someone's blood, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, because certainly there are various ways of of

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Speaker 1: of taking another individual's blood and gaining some sort of

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Speaker 1: life essence from it. Right, Probably the most notable mythological,

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Speaker 1: folkloric example of this, if not actual historical fact, is

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Speaker 1: that of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathing Right, the blood Countess. Right,

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Speaker 1: So she was one according to the historical record, I mean,

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Speaker 1: we can never really know. She was apparently one of

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Speaker 1: the most prolific serial killers in human history. Yes, I mean,

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Speaker 1: we're talking to like six fifty victims during her reign,

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Speaker 1: and the charges level against we're pretty out there, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and that's one of the problems looking back

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Speaker 1: at it. To what extent are these uh, these charges

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Speaker 1: in Bellish, To what extent are they outright slander? Right? Right?

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Speaker 1: But at least what she was charged with was the

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Speaker 1: murder of hundreds of I think it was mostly young girls. Yes, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there were charges that that young virsion girls were favorite victim. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And the story goes that Countess Bathie feared aging, that

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Speaker 1: she didn't want to become old and shriveled and and

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Speaker 1: see her youth to evaporate before her eyes, and she

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Speaker 1: got a pretty interesting idea in her head what if

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Speaker 1: she could maintain her youth with the blood of the young. Again,

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Speaker 1: we we don't know to what extending Any of this

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Speaker 1: is history. A lot of it's probably just made up

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Speaker 1: legend about her. It is pretty certain, I think, I

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Speaker 1: think most historians think that she did really or was

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Speaker 1: involved in the killing of lots of young girls. But

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Speaker 1: you know, her motivations for it, and whether she actually

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Speaker 1: bathed in their blood or consume their blood or anything

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Speaker 1: like that that. I think that's a lot shakier. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you don't really see many of any historians say yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think she actually bathed in the blood of virgins.

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Speaker 1: More likely they tend to run the gannet between she

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Speaker 1: was just a victim of conspiracy, uh, but was also

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Speaker 1: a part of a bread and murderous, an awful family

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Speaker 1: who Yeah, she was a really awful ruler who probably

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Speaker 1: got what was coming to her. So you can sort

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Speaker 1: of pick and choose and decide where you're gonna fall

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Speaker 1: in there. But the the idea, the myth of the

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Speaker 1: thing that the folkloric idea of this evil, rich ruler

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Speaker 1: uh bathing in a young person's blood in order to

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Speaker 1: stay young, that continues to resonate, and and of course

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Speaker 1: it also has various um racist and sexist qualities to

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Speaker 1: it as well. And besides from this, you know sort

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Speaker 1: of out the outskirts of Europe, Yeah, Eastern European. She's exotic,

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Speaker 1: she's dangerous, uh, And of course all she wants to

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Speaker 1: do is is a peer young. She's so vain and

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Speaker 1: so hateful towards those who actually have beauty and youth

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Speaker 1: that she would murder them and bathe in their blood.

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Speaker 1: Now there's a tangent about Elizabeth Bathory that I cannot resist.

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Speaker 1: It's not really related, but I remember back when I

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Speaker 1: was in high school, coming across it was either a

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Speaker 1: seat or a tape of a metal band called Bathory

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Speaker 1: that I thought was the funniest CD cover I've ever

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Speaker 1: seen because the bad calligraphy on the name Bathory made

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Speaker 1: it look like it said bat Lord. Wouldn't that be

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Speaker 1: a great metal band? That Lord sounds good too? And

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Speaker 1: also you know, vampirick and also so I like it. Uh. Now,

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Speaker 1: when we get into mythology and folklore, of course, there

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Speaker 1: are way too many examples of blood drinkers and vampireic creatures.

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Speaker 1: They're far too many examples of blood rituals to even

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Speaker 1: go into right there. Just it's a common trope throughout

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Speaker 1: human history. Um, we even had and we have so

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Speaker 1: many examples even of our own culture. One that came

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Speaker 1: to mind when we were talking the other day was

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies TV show called The Immortal. I've never

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Speaker 1: seen this. I only saw it because there was a

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Speaker 1: brief time in the late nineties, I think maybe the

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Speaker 1: early two thousands where they were showing reruns on the

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Speaker 1: Sci Fi Channel, and it was one of these shows

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Speaker 1: where it was like it was an ABC it was

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Speaker 1: an ABC Movie of the Week and then a very

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Speaker 1: brief television show that didn't take off, And it was

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Speaker 1: kind of from The Incredible Hulk mold. So you have

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Speaker 1: this going from town to town. Yeah, somebody's chasing him.

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Speaker 1: There's something this overarching plot of these people who are

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Speaker 1: after him. But then from in each town that he

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Speaker 1: goes to, he has this ability to help people or

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Speaker 1: their new sub villains to deal with. Also, like The

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Speaker 1: Incredible Hulk, he's got a power that's both a blessing

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Speaker 1: and a curse. Yes, So his his whole deal in

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Speaker 1: this show is that his blood uh is essentially kind

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Speaker 1: of magic, right, It's this wonderful, wonderful blood. In a

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Speaker 1: transfusion of this blood will basically wipe out any of

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Speaker 1: your illnesses and it can allow you to live longer.

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Speaker 1: So it's a it's it's it's a longevity uh drug

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Speaker 1: in this man's veins. It's like a biological anti virus program. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so of course there's a particular rich old dude

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Speaker 1: who wants nothing more than to just keep him closed

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Speaker 1: up in his mansion to himself, so he can just

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Speaker 1: have as much of his blood as he needs to

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Speaker 1: keep going and make him the mad Max blood bag

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Speaker 1: on the front of his car. Yeah yeah, right there

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Speaker 1: in the front of his limo. Uh so, but of

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Speaker 1: course the hero doesn't doesn't dig that, so he escapes,

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Speaker 1: he's on the run, and uh you know, it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a very nineteen seventies kind of an incredible Hulk delivery,

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Speaker 1: but it's kind of a cool idea and it definitely

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Speaker 1: ties in with a lot of the actual science we're

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Speaker 1: going to discuss later in the episode. Well, there there

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Speaker 1: are multiple ways that I think people would imagine blood

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Speaker 1: could have a power to rejuvenate, to invigorate, to give

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Speaker 1: you the strength of the young, and I think they

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Speaker 1: sort of occur along a scale of magical thinking. Like

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Speaker 1: on one hand, there's a much more straightforward, I think

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Speaker 1: material kind of approach to it, where you'd think, well,

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Speaker 1: there's something about young people's blood that gives them their

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Speaker 1: body strength, and so it must be nutritious in a way.

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Speaker 1: You know, you can imagine people wanting to consume it

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Speaker 1: with a with a fairly secular mindset, as long as

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Speaker 1: they don't know much about modern medicine. Um. But then

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Speaker 1: there's also the magical end where you start getting into

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Speaker 1: magical associative thinking, where where properties of a thing can

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Speaker 1: be absorbed by coming into contact with its essence. And

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Speaker 1: then you get into some of these funeral cannibal rights

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Speaker 1: where an individual will partake of the flesh of a

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Speaker 1: loved one after they have died in order to absorb

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Speaker 1: part of them. And then there's the whole realm of

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Speaker 1: what James Frasier called homeopathic magic, where light cures likes

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Speaker 1: and the thinking here would go that the blood of

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Speaker 1: the young must cure the old and turned back the clock,

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Speaker 1: because that's just that's what it is. That's the the

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Speaker 1: inherent nature of how how different properties interact with each other. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So throughout the history of using homeopathic magical medicine, the

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Speaker 1: idea might be that you take a thing associated with

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Speaker 1: another thing to cure that second thing. So, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you had problems with your hand, you might consume

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Speaker 1: the paw of an animal or the hand of a

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Speaker 1: person or something like that, you know, or a problem

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Speaker 1: if you had headaches, you might consume ground up skull

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Speaker 1: or something like that. So yeah, if your if your

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Speaker 1: problem is aging, you can consume youth. And what is

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Speaker 1: the essence of youth more than the juice of young people?

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Speaker 1: Young people's blood. And another influence I can also think

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Speaker 1: of that might have made people over the centuries want

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Speaker 1: to imbibe the blood of the young in order to

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Speaker 1: avoid aging or to restore vigor and vitality, is the

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Speaker 1: sort of bodily humor thinking. You know that you had

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Speaker 1: the four temperaments that went along with the bodily humors theory,

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Speaker 1: and in that traditional order of temperaments, the sanguine temperament,

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Speaker 1: the one that's associated with blood is the one that's

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Speaker 1: like positive and excitable and high energy and playful. It's

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Speaker 1: still there in our language, like to be sanguine about

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Speaker 1: something is to be optimistic or positive about it. So

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that association within the body Humor's

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Speaker 1: theory is a symptom of this underlying association we have

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Speaker 1: between blood and then youth and vigor and vitality, or

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Speaker 1: if the association between blood and youth and vigor comes

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Speaker 1: from the bodily humor's theory. Yeah, that's that's an interesting take.

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Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that. You know, another thing that

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Speaker 1: comes to mind, at least for the modern era, is

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Speaker 1: that since we we talked before about how we can't

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Speaker 1: help but think of ourselves and think of reality in

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Speaker 1: terms of whatever our technology is. So uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: for a while, certainly in the industrial age, we've we've

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Speaker 1: looked at the body as biomechanical, and here we're having

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Speaker 1: to deal with all our automobiles, and what do you

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Speaker 1: have to do with your automobile? You have to take

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Speaker 1: out the old oil, right and get some new oil

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Speaker 1: in there. So maybe on a subliminal level, even a

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Speaker 1: subconscious level, rather we end up thinking of of ourselves

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Speaker 1: as an automobile and like, well, maybe I'm just filled

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Speaker 1: with all this old oil, and what if I could

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Speaker 1: get that old oil out and get a you know,

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Speaker 1: a a transfusion of new oil. Yeah, So I could

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Speaker 1: see where we might buy into the concept, um, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: at a subconscious level, just based on our technology. And

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Speaker 1: it's also of course easy to to think of it

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Speaker 1: just as pure metaphor, right, because we're we're surrounded by

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Speaker 1: you know, largely youth obsessed culture. You see plenty of

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Speaker 1: examples of of middle age and older individuals who is

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Speaker 1: grasping after that youth right made sometimes quite literally in

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Speaker 1: the form of rich old men with very young romantic partners. Now,

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Speaker 1: I can't remember where I read this. I think it

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Speaker 1: was in one of our sources, maybe let me know,

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Speaker 1: But there was a suggestion that the idea of grasping

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Speaker 1: back after youth might also be a fairly recent thing

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Speaker 1: in the history of humanity, because it's only recently that

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Speaker 1: humans have begun to regularly live to old age. In

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Speaker 1: some parts of the world, I mean, more often there

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Speaker 1: was high infant mortality, more people side in middle age

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Speaker 1: or younger. Uh, And now it's pretty common that if

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Speaker 1: you have access to good, high quality medical care, you

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Speaker 1: can usually live to a decently long age. Well, that's

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Speaker 1: that's an interesting take on it there too. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so maybe that is kind of something we should have

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Speaker 1: looped in with the biomechanical body as a more modern

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Speaker 1: view on on vampiod diets. Now, before we really get

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Speaker 1: into the topic, though, we probably just have to talk

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Speaker 1: about the consumption of blood as a food, like what

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Speaker 1: does that mean? What does that entail? And it's a

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Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting, uh, to stop and study that, particularly

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Speaker 1: when you look at animals that are obligate. Sango VORs

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Speaker 1: that that feed exclusively on blood, like the vampire bat

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Speaker 1: say that category again obligates, So that's great blood only.

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Speaker 1: They go to the they go to the restaurant. They

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Speaker 1: need to see the blood only menu. They're not gonna

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Speaker 1: eat the salad. They're not gonna eat the steak. It's

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Speaker 1: just the blood. That's the corner that they've they've painted

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Speaker 1: themselves into evolutionarily, well, from a lay person's point of view,

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Speaker 1: it would seem like blood would be a perfectly nutritious thing.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the conventional wisdom is that the blood is

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Speaker 1: the life, right, Yeah, I mean it's the life, it's

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Speaker 1: the life blood. This is the stuff itself. This is

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Speaker 1: like the pure essence. This is like humanity straight. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you think that's kind of ore the magical mythic realm

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Speaker 1: to it. But when you actually look at something like

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Speaker 1: a vampire bat um and you look at its consumption

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Speaker 1: of blood, I mean it's basically consuming protein and water.

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Speaker 1: There's there's no fat for the bat to store away,

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Speaker 1: So unlike their insect and fruit eating kin, they can't hibernate,

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Speaker 1: they can't migrate because they lack the fat stores. Instead,

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Speaker 1: they have to feed every night, lapping up to their

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Speaker 1: body weight in order to survive, and um, it sounds

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Speaker 1: like a very difficult limited diet. Yeah. Yeah, And and

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of fascinating theories about how it

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Speaker 1: occurred that they may have started out feeding on parasite

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Speaker 1: that contain the blood, and then eventually that they decided

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Speaker 1: weren't decided. Eventually they evolve more in the direction of

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Speaker 1: feeding exclusively and directly on the blood, as opposed to

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Speaker 1: the creatures that feed on blood. Oh, interesting, how an

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Speaker 1: intermediary could come in there? What was that story I

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Speaker 1: was reading about a while back about there's a particular

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Speaker 1: species of African jumping spider that likes human blood but

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Speaker 1: not drinking it directly from humans, right, praise on mosquitoes

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Speaker 1: that contain it. Yeah, so it's the same, the same

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Speaker 1: sort of situation where yeah, eventually you just give up

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Speaker 1: the middleman and just going straight for this might come

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Speaker 1: straight to us. Yeah, And so that's one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons that it's hard to imagine a human feeding exclusively

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Speaker 1: on blood to get into or even even a humanoid

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Speaker 1: certainly a larger creature, just because the energy levels required.

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Speaker 1: But we know fully well that humans do sometimes consume blood,

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Speaker 1: don't they. I mean, I I have seen a blood sausage,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think I've ever eaten one. I don't

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Speaker 1: know that I have either, unless, I mean, after I

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Speaker 1: would reading about it, I thought, well, maybe I've had

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Speaker 1: it on an airplane. It didn't realize it because I've

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Speaker 1: like I've flown some some some particularly some Asian airlines

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Speaker 1: before where there's like some sort of a sausage meat

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Speaker 1: that I couldn't identify looking at pictures. Maybe that was

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Speaker 1: blood sausage. I don't know, but you see some version

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Speaker 1: of blood sausage in a lot of different cultures, and uh,

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Speaker 1: including I was. I found this interesting. The red tofu

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Speaker 1: found in some parts of China, the blood tofu blood tofuu. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's made from like pigs blood or something. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: it's not not really tofu. So any any vegetarians out

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Speaker 1: there see that on the menu, you might, and you know,

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Speaker 1: ask a few questions about it before you order it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there are various blood festivals. There's

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Speaker 1: a Nepalese Yak blood festival in which they drink blood.

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Speaker 1: They are various traditions throughout the world. Where blood is

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Speaker 1: consumed directly as sort of a culinary ritual. And certainly

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Speaker 1: in the American tradition, what everyone the whole thing is

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Speaker 1: to have a big rare steak, right, And certainly that

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Speaker 1: is blood leaking out of that meat. You know, I've

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Speaker 1: heard that all my life, but I think I've actually

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Speaker 1: read recently that that is not true. That the that

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Speaker 1: a the like the meat you would buy package the

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Speaker 1: grocery store, is mostly drained of blood. There's really not

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Speaker 1: going to be much blood in it. Uh. And that

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Speaker 1: when you cut into a bloody steak, you know, like

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Speaker 1: a nice rare steak, and all that red liquid comes out,

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Speaker 1: that's mostly just a mixture of water and then some

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Speaker 1: other protein. I think it might have been myoglobin. Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'm thrown off here by vampire movies

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Speaker 1: in which like a newly turned vampire starts sucking steaks

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Speaker 1: to stay alive. I feel like that trope has shown up,

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Speaker 1: I think inhabit and perhaps in Chronos as well. I

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Speaker 1: can't remember Chronos. That's a great one. So yeah, maybe

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Speaker 1: maybe this is an example of my my knowledge is

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Speaker 1: that has based more fiction than reality. But but either way,

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Speaker 1: humans have not been averse to consuming blood throughout history

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Speaker 1: as part of their diet, but not exclusively. Well, now

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Speaker 1: that leads us to just again the idea of medicinal

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Speaker 1: consumption of blood. Occasional consumption of blood is part of

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Speaker 1: some actual treatment of malady or illness, or just some

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Speaker 1: sort of a ritualistic practice, and there are a number

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Speaker 1: of cool examples of this. Drawing up most of these

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Speaker 1: examples from two different sources here, there's an excellent article

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Speaker 1: by Maria Dolan from Smithsonian Magazine titled The Gruesome History

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Speaker 1: of Eating corpses as Medicine, and of course that goes

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Speaker 1: into a lot more than just blood consumption, but also

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Speaker 1: flesh consumption. Is great article. I'll include a link to

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Speaker 1: it on the landing page for this episode. And there's

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Speaker 1: also another great article, Young Blood, by Jess Zimmerman writing

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Speaker 1: for Ian Magazine. I really liked both of these articles too,

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Speaker 1: that were great reads. But yeah, so some of the facts.

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Speaker 1: According to a description by Plenty the Elder, who is

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Speaker 1: a Roman historian, apparently Romans loved to drink the blood

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Speaker 1: of gladiators who were killed in the arena in ancient Rome,

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Speaker 1: so you'd have people down there. It out. I guess

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Speaker 1: one of them gets skewered with one of those little

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Speaker 1: pokey pokey Roman swords, the blood starts to come out,

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Speaker 1: and people just be like, give me some don't count

348
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Speaker 1: out the trident, dude. I always like to try it

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Speaker 1: ent and that guy, to whatever extent, that was actually

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Speaker 1: a thing and not just an artistic motif. But I

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Speaker 1: always I was always rooting for him because he had

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Speaker 1: more of the uphill battle. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would drink his blood because clearly he's he's he's smart, powerful,

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Speaker 1: but smart. Yeah, so that's what I want before I

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Speaker 1: go into podcasts. Again, I'm not sure exactly where this

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Speaker 1: falls on that scale I talked about earlier, like the

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Speaker 1: the sort of secular this is some kind of material

358
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Speaker 1: nutrition thinking to the magical I'm gaining the power and

359
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Speaker 1: essence of the gladiator thinking, I'd imagine this falls more

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Speaker 1: to the magical side, right, Yeah, I would think so. Um,

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Speaker 1: And it seems like it based on what I was reading.

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Speaker 1: It may have its roots in Truscan funeral rights, so

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Speaker 1: it may go beyond just you know, the near near

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Speaker 1: bloodthirsty aspect of the culture at the time. And I've

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Speaker 1: also read there's a two thousand three paper title between

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Speaker 1: Horror and Hope Gladiator's blood as a cure for UH

367
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Speaker 1: epileptics in Ancient Medicine, And this is published in the

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Speaker 1: Journal of Historical Neuroscience. And this article posited that spontaneous

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Speaker 1: recovery from some forms of epilepsy may be responsible for

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Speaker 1: the illusion of therapeutic effectiveness UH from drinking the blood

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Speaker 1: of a gladiator. So it's one of those things where

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Speaker 1: it seemed to work enough of the time, so why

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Speaker 1: not because it's also it's just it's just good fun.

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Speaker 1: It's just part of the part of going out on

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Speaker 1: the town and enjoying a gladiatorial contest. Well, yeah, the

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Speaker 1: false cure working by this method, I think was a

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Speaker 1: common feature of ancient medicine. You always read about these

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Speaker 1: types of medicines that that ancient people's thought would be

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Speaker 1: effective at curing X, Y or Z, when we now know,

380
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Speaker 1: you know, this has no effect at all. Why do

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Speaker 1: people think this? What might have happened really often is

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Speaker 1: that somebody took some of this in an unrelated way.

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Speaker 1: They just got better and it's like, look, it worked,

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Speaker 1: or they might have received a placebo effect boost from

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Speaker 1: from obtaining it. And then likewise, since uh, either they

386
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Speaker 1: had to pay a certain amount to obtain this gladiator

387
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Speaker 1: blood or it was such a big deal to get

388
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Speaker 1: it that you end up tweaking your memories enough to where,

389
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Speaker 1: of course it was a gladiator blood. I didn't drink

390
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Speaker 1: the blood of a dead slave and not benefit from

391
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Speaker 1: it and a monster, do you think, I am? No, no, no,

392
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Speaker 1: that that makes sense too, because we you know, we

393
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:39,359
Speaker 1: go through all kinds of mental justification to justify things

394
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Speaker 1: that were difficult to get. So if you spend a

395
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Speaker 1: lot of money on appliance or a piece of furniture,

396
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Speaker 1: you end up coming up with ways of thinking this

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Speaker 1: was a good investment. The same could be true some

398
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Speaker 1: gladiator blood. I'm quite sure. So we we see this

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Speaker 1: trend throughout history, and we're gonna roll through some of

400
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Speaker 1: the examples, and some of these you're gonna get into

401
00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:04,920
Speaker 1: a very alleged territory because it's a popular motif as well,

402
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:08,840
Speaker 1: to slander your enemy by saying they drink your people ahead. Yeah,

403
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Speaker 1: quite common in fact. Like so, one example would be

404
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Speaker 1: Pope Innocent the Eighth who died in fourtwo, and the

405
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Speaker 1: story is that he was one of the first people

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Speaker 1: to receive an attempted blood transfusion. But I think the

407
00:22:24,040 --> 00:22:26,119
Speaker 1: stories seemed to be all over the place. It's like

408
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Speaker 1: some say that he got blood from willing donors, or

409
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Speaker 1: that he drank the blood of Jewish children, or yeah, yeah,

410
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Speaker 1: sort of a reverse of the blood libel often leveled

411
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Speaker 1: against Jews in medieval times, saying that they're they're they're

412
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Speaker 1: drinking the blood of of of gentile children or processing

413
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Speaker 1: it into some sort of abait good. Yeah. So so

414
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Speaker 1: obviously that was not true with Pope Innocent the Eighth.

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Speaker 1: I'd say grain AsSalt there, yeah, yeah, and not just

416
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Speaker 1: as a flavor, the blood of the young boy. No, no,

417
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: no drinking. But but obviously the idea there was that

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Speaker 1: while you had an ailing, dying pope, maybe giving them

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Speaker 1: the blood of someone younger could help stave off death, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And of course you have various um minds that are

421
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Speaker 1: that are chiming in on this. Fifteenth century philosopher Marsilio

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Speaker 1: Ficino suggested drinking blood from the arm of a young person,

423
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Speaker 1: might I give you a health boost? So so you

424
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Speaker 1: have that to to boost you or to encourage you

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Speaker 1: to try it. So I assume I still living young person. Um, well,

426
00:23:35,119 --> 00:23:37,400
Speaker 1: you know they're young people. So unless you're just you're

427
00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:41,080
Speaker 1: lucky and they're not, you're probably gaining it from a

428
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:42,920
Speaker 1: young person. Also, you know they're young people. They don't

429
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 1: have a lot of money. Maybe they want to make

430
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 1: a few bucks on the side by draining a little

431
00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:51,760
Speaker 1: blood off into a into a little uh little glass

432
00:23:51,800 --> 00:23:55,159
Speaker 1: for a little goblet for elderly members of the society.

433
00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:58,280
Speaker 1: I find the arm specification here kind of funny, like

434
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: is that just an accident? End have said, well, the

435
00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: easiest place to get it is from the arm or

436
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: did the arm matter? To him? Was like, now if

437
00:24:05,800 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: you drink it from there, from their butt cheek, you're

438
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:11,919
Speaker 1: not going to get the same restorative power. Well, he

439
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:14,880
Speaker 1: must be referring to to obtaining it from a young,

440
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:18,400
Speaker 1: probably willing person here, and then they're not draining them

441
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,400
Speaker 1: whole because yeah, the arm is far enough away from

442
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: your center of being. It's it's it's not close to anything.

443
00:24:24,920 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: Uh that's too important, so yeah. Yeah. And then of course,

444
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:32,120
Speaker 1: up through the Renaissance, you you still had all these

445
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: beliefs that consuming the flesh or the blood of humans

446
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:38,840
Speaker 1: in various ways could cure all kinds of diseases, right,

447
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, sixteen and seventeenth century, you had many Europeans,

448
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: including royalty priests, even scientists of the day that are

449
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 1: that are trying remedies that are made from human bone,

450
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 1: from fat, or from blood. Uh, in order to treat

451
00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: everything from headache to epilepsy. And despite some of the

452
00:24:56,840 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: science we're gonna get into later in this episode, I

453
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:04,119
Speaker 1: think we can assume probably none of that actually worked. Um,

454
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:06,720
Speaker 1: let's see some other points here. At sixteenth century Italian

455
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:11,400
Speaker 1: alchemist recommended taking children under the age of thirteen, shutting

456
00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 1: them in a well enclosed room, sizening out the air

457
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:18,119
Speaker 1: which would be quote filled with the breath and expired

458
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: substance of these five young virgins there for curative powers.

459
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:25,880
Speaker 1: But again this is an alchemist, so yeah again grain

460
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,719
Speaker 1: of salt. And of course through all these different rituals

461
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 1: that come up, the blood needs to be fresh, you needs.

462
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,159
Speaker 1: It's not just a matter of finding a dead body

463
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: and draining it like the body needs either needs to

464
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: be still alive or very very very quickly exterminated. So

465
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: there you can think of the gladiatorial arena. Of course,

466
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:46,560
Speaker 1: you've got somebody killed right there in front of you,

467
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 1: so you know it's fresh. Or you could go to

468
00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:53,600
Speaker 1: the other route, of the less valorous route, and stand

469
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: around waiting for a prisoner to be executed. Ah. Yes,

470
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: and here we see this, this tradition of the of

471
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:02,480
Speaker 1: the gladiators blood being carried on really into two fairly

472
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:08,400
Speaker 1: recent times. UM. I was reading one of the sources

473
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:11,439
Speaker 1: here of that article by Maria Dolan Smithsonian said that

474
00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight we saw the last known attempt

475
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:19,719
Speaker 1: made in Germany to swallow blood from a an executed

476
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 1: criminal at the scaffold. Because for for a long time,

477
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 1: apparently this was the thing. You would go to an

478
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:29,640
Speaker 1: execution and you drop a few coins for a cup

479
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: of still warm blood from the executed Because the executioner

480
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: he's kind of a magical boundary walker right between life

481
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:41,440
Speaker 1: and death, between accepted society and the outside. Often he's

482
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: wearing a hood, right, and so this is where where

483
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 1: you can go to him. He's a master of life

484
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: and death, so he can give you some of the

485
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 1: juice of life and death. Um. And again they're no

486
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,440
Speaker 1: more gladiatorial contest. This is your best bet at getting

487
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 1: a young person's blood, because because that's the best kind.

488
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:00,879
Speaker 1: You gotta get the young virgin nor the young man's

489
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: so the virile young blood, that's where the magic is. Yeah,

490
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,919
Speaker 1: and along those lines, I think sometimes people recommended trying

491
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 1: to get blood from people who were still alive. I

492
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,479
Speaker 1: guess like we were talking about was probably meant by

493
00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:13,919
Speaker 1: the arm and the young person earlier. But people like

494
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: paracelsis where we're suggesting that you should should drink fresh blood. Right, Yeah,

495
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:24,199
Speaker 1: sixteenth century Germans with physician general Renaissance man, you know,

496
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:28,239
Speaker 1: just hit his hands and everything, great Renaissance weirdo. And

497
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 1: he believed yet the blood was probably good for drinking.

498
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: And it was one of his followers that took this

499
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: even further by suggesting that you take blood from a

500
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 1: living body. And again there there there's a tradition here

501
00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: of of learned men at least contemplating the prospect. Leonardo

502
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: da Vinci said, we preserve our life with the death

503
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 1: of others in a dead thing in since a life remains,

504
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 1: which when it is reunited with the stomachs of the living,

505
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:59,360
Speaker 1: regains sensitive and intellectual life. That's an interesting take on digestion. Yeah,

506
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 1: so I'm the sources are there. You have some you have,

507
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 1: you have learned men who are talking about the potential

508
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:10,359
Speaker 1: benefits of drinking blood. You have rituals and rights throughout history,

509
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 1: so it continues to seem to make a certain amount

510
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 1: of sense. Of course, if freshness isn't quite so necessary

511
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: to you, you could probably just work it into some

512
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,640
Speaker 1: various recipes, right, you can make a marmalade out of it. Yeah,

513
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:26,439
Speaker 1: apparently there was a Franciscan apothecary recipe from sixteen seventy

514
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: nine for a human blood based marmalade um. And as

515
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: this as wen we end up eventually sort of transferring

516
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 1: out of this. As as as medical science advances, suddenly

517
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 1: the the idea becomes more about tissue. I mean, we're

518
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 1: keeping the basic idea of absorbing the essence of some

519
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: other more vital person's body intact, but we're just switching

520
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: from blood to well, maybe we need to implant some testicles. Yeah, yeah,

521
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 1: you see this. In the eighteen nineties and paris Um,

522
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: Charles Edward Brown Sequad was with a champion of testes

523
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: implantation um, Sergei Voronoff, would physically remove healthy testicles from

524
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:14,719
Speaker 1: young animals and implant the glands into patients. So you know,

525
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: the thing is like that they're they're off base here,

526
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 1: but it's it's forecasting like real science to come and

527
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 1: real usable principles of of tissue and oregan transplants sometimes

528
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:30,600
Speaker 1: between species. And of course blood transfusions are an essential

529
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: part of modern medical science. And it's not so much

530
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: that you absorb the blood of the young to gain

531
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:40,640
Speaker 1: the power of the gladiator. But if you are ailing,

532
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 1: if if you have a blood deficiency you need blood

533
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: for some reason, of course you can get a blood

534
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 1: donation from someone. Yeah, I mean to fall back on

535
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: the biomechanical automobile example, it's like it's not so much

536
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 1: that you know, say what you will about old oil

537
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 1: and new oil. The machine needs oil to run, and

538
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: if the oil leaking out, you've got to add some more. Obviously,

539
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: it's the difference between you wouldn't try to steal the

540
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: oil from a sports car to gain the vitality of

541
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: the sports car. You just need oil from somewhere. It

542
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 1: can come from wherever, and so in this we end

543
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:15,920
Speaker 1: up working back up to our modern age, to our

544
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:18,560
Speaker 1: very modern age, as in studies that have come out

545
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: this year the last few years where we again see

546
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: this motif re emerge that you could take young blood,

547
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: specifically young blood into your older body and benefit from

548
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 1: it both physically and mentally. So we've talked about the mythology,

549
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: the magical thinking of absorbing the powerful essence of a strong, young, vigorous,

550
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: vital person by claiming their blood and making it your own.

551
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: But there is some actual science that runs bizarrely close

552
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: to this magical tradition. And this science has been in

553
00:30:57,680 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: development for a long time. I think it's it's been

554
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 1: sort of brewing for more than a century based on

555
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: some old techniques, but it's only in the past decade

556
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: or maybe a little more than the people have really

557
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: started to catch on to exactly how potent this type

558
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,120
Speaker 1: of therapy could be. Yeah, really to the point now

559
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 1: where it's it's very promising. Yeah. Uh, And we don't

560
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: know yet what all of the implications are going to be.

561
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: But let's get into the details of why you would

562
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: take the blood of the young and give it to

563
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: the old in a medical context. Yeah. And one of

564
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: the a couple of big studies here that that that

565
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:37,880
Speaker 1: we're drawing from. One of them was the two thousand,

566
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: fourteen Stanford University Medical Center study. UH. And and these

567
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 1: these efforts, of course involved prior studies and continuing studies.

568
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: This is very much a it's a network of findings. Yeah,

569
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 1: it's not just like a one off by any means. Yeah.

570
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: So it had already been before this one particular study,

571
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 1: had already been established that, uh, there was some indication

572
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 1: that some reins of the brains of old mice, when

573
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: given the blood of young mice, would produce more nerve cells.

574
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 1: And so obviously that's a good thing. But unfortunately the

575
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:13,280
Speaker 1: reverse also held true. So when you gave young mice

576
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 1: exposure to the blood of old mice, they suffered for

577
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 1: it that they had decreased health outcomes, we might say. Right. So,

578
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 1: this time the researchers checked both for changes within nerve

579
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 1: circuits and individual nerve cells, uh, in order to to

580
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: demonstrate improvements in learning and memory. So first they examined

581
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 1: the pairs of mice whose circulatory systems had been surgically conjoined.

582
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: And this is the process we've been we've been doing

583
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 1: for a while, UM, a process known as parabiosis. Yeah.

584
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 1: We actually talked about this process on an episode of

585
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: Forward thinking that I recorded with my co hosts on

586
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 1: that show last year. But parabiosis is a very interesting, creepy,

587
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: weird procedure that that really gives a lot of people

588
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 1: the willies, but it has led to some very interesting

589
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: and promising medical outcomes, so I think it's really worth

590
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 1: talking about. So in this case, parabiosys, it comes from

591
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: the words meaning sort of beside life, so side to

592
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: side life essentially, and it refers to taking a patch

593
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:25,080
Speaker 1: of skin off of two mice and then sowing the

594
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 1: mice together. Okay, so basically like hooking up the plumbing,

595
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: the circulatory plumbing. Yeah, so you're creating a common circulatory

596
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: system and causing the two mice to share a blood

597
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: stream and the blood becomes one common pool. They're parabiotic.

598
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 1: And the process collaboration, Yeah, exactly, they were working together,

599
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 1: they're they're getting closer. So this was a process that

600
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: was described by a French physiologist named Paul Barrett. It

601
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 1: spelled like bert I believe in French, that'd be Barrett.

602
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: I apologize if I'm wrong about that. In the sixties,

603
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 1: I think it, and then later in the nineteen thirties,

604
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: the process was improved upon by a pair of people

605
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: named Bunster and Meer. But essentially it entails taking two

606
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: mice side by side and attaching them at parallel elbows

607
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:19,359
Speaker 1: and knees, and then sewing together an exposed patch of

608
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:23,560
Speaker 1: skin along the sides, and of course then the natural

609
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: mammalian healing process kicks in the sides attached together, they

610
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,440
Speaker 1: fuse the skin joins and the capillaries connect, and then

611
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 1: the mice can share this blood system and then apparently

612
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: after some length of time, the pair can be separated

613
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: again if necessary for the experiment. So that's the parabiasis.

614
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 1: But what is hetero chronic parabiasis, because that's what they

615
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: were really practicing here. Hetero chronic would mean mixed time right,

616
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:54,239
Speaker 1: mixed time scales. So when you're creating parabiotic mice that

617
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: are hetero chronic, that means one old mouse and one

618
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: young mouse. And this is where the fund comes in,

619
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: because apparently when you join one old mouse and one

620
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: young mouse, you get startling results. In the nineteen fifties,

621
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:13,440
Speaker 1: there was a guy at Cornell named Clive mackay, and

622
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:19,759
Speaker 1: McKay performed experiments on parabiasis, essentially trying to learn what

623
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:22,600
Speaker 1: he could about how to prolong lifespan. Can can you

624
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:26,360
Speaker 1: take mammals and make them live longer by sharing blood

625
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 1: in this way? And what they found was that the

626
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 1: old mice who got paired up, who got sewn together

627
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:37,360
Speaker 1: with a young mouse, showed rejuvenated cartilage, meaning that the

628
00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: cartilage andist tissue in their body actually appeared younger. Uh.

629
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: And more recently, this line of research was picked up

630
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:48,840
Speaker 1: on by a researcher named Thomas A. Rando who continue

631
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: continued this and published a study in Nature in two

632
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:53,920
Speaker 1: thousand five. And this showed that if you took two

633
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: of these mice and you sewed them together, one old

634
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 1: mouse and one young mouse, and you left him that

635
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: way for five weeks, eventually the older mice showed improved

636
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:07,680
Speaker 1: rates of muscle healing and liver cell regeneration. So that's

637
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 1: very interesting and promising. I read a Nature News piece

638
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:14,320
Speaker 1: about this line of research that had a very funny

639
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 1: part where it said quote after the team published its results,

640
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:21,399
Speaker 1: Rando's phone started ringing incessantly. Some of the calls were

641
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: from men's health magazines looking for ways to build muscle.

642
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:28,240
Speaker 1: Others were from people fascinated by the idea of forestalling death.

643
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 1: They wanted to know whether young blood extended lifespan. So

644
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:35,359
Speaker 1: already the vultures who don't want to die and don't

645
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:39,239
Speaker 1: want to grow old are starting to pounce, said, I

646
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: find a young person without any limbs and just kind

647
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: of sew them out of my back like a living,

648
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:50,879
Speaker 1: rejuvenating back back. You'd become master Blaster from from Thunderdome,

649
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:54,240
Speaker 1: except it it would be you. I guess you'd be Blaster,

650
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 1: and then you'd have a master on your back who

651
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: is actually your blood slavey stitch on a millennial and

652
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 1: and hit the clubs right. But anyway, that's all of

653
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 1: the heterochronic parabiases, and that sort of brings us back

654
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:10,759
Speaker 1: up into the research of the more recent years, including

655
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: this study. Yeah, and this study the hippocampus was really

656
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 1: craz key. You. Now, this is a part of the

657
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:18,800
Speaker 1: brain brain that's critical for forming certain types of memories,

658
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 1: notably used in recollection and recognition of spatial patterns. Experience

659
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: physically alters it, and and various quote detrimental, anatomical and

660
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: functional changes occur there as an individual ages. So as

661
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: you get older, you're this part of your brain. I

662
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 1: think the brain in general, but especially this part of

663
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: your brain sees decline. Right. And it's also like one

664
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:44,359
Speaker 1: of the examples is often thrown out, and I think

665
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:45,799
Speaker 1: this has come up on the podcast before. You have

666
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 1: London cabbies who have who actually have have larger hippocampuses

667
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 1: due to the uh, you know, all the their knowledge,

668
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: their physical knowledge of the city. They not yeah, the knowledge. Um,

669
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 1: it's like or an order of warlocks, the kind of

670
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 1: warlocks of their own kind. Um. But in old mice

671
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,880
Speaker 1: with new blood, they quote found consistent differences in a

672
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 1: number of biochemical, anatomical, and electrophysiological measures known to be

673
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: important to nerve cell circuits encoding of new experiences for

674
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:25,480
Speaker 1: retention in the cerebral cortex. So essentially what's happening here

675
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:28,799
Speaker 1: is the hippocamp i of older mice resemble that of

676
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 1: younger mice. They made greater amounts of various substances that

677
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:37,240
Speaker 1: hippocampal cells are known to produce when learning is taking place,

678
00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: So we see not only a tissue boost here, but

679
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:45,240
Speaker 1: in actual mental boost like it's it's recharging the hippocampus,

680
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 1: recharging the mind of the young mouse. They also found

681
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: that hippocampal nerve cells from older members members of these uh,

682
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: these old young parabiotic pairs words, also showed an enhanced

683
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 1: ability to strengthen the connection between one nerve cell and another,

684
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,240
Speaker 1: which again is essential to learning and forming new memories,

685
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:09,719
Speaker 1: forging those internal pathways in the mind. And older mice

686
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: and fused with young blood also did better on food

687
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:14,800
Speaker 1: hunting tests, such as one in particular where they would

688
00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:19,239
Speaker 1: have a food platform that's submerged in a water filled container. Okay,

689
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 1: so in this study they're not just looking at the

690
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:26,400
Speaker 1: anatomical information. They're not just saying, hey, you know, what

691
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 1: is the number of cells we can find in this

692
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,480
Speaker 1: part of the brain, but they're actually testing behavior how

693
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: it works in the field. Yea. Indeed, they also found

694
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 1: they performed better and freeze tests. Now, this is where

695
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 1: mice are trained to freeze and fear when plucked into

696
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 1: a particular environment. And while old mile mice usually perform

697
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,440
Speaker 1: worse than the young, freezing for shorter periods of time,

698
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:50,879
Speaker 1: betraying a lack of recognition. So, in other words, you've

699
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: been training to fear this environment, and if you the faster,

700
00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 1: you recognize it and freeze and fear the longer you're frozen.

701
00:39:56,880 --> 00:40:00,479
Speaker 1: That shows that you're you're recalling it. But older mice

702
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 1: get desensitized to this. They don't recognize their conditions as

703
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:09,880
Speaker 1: quickly correct. But when they have that that rejuvenating influx

704
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: of young blood, they perform better on the freeze test. Yeah,

705
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:17,960
Speaker 1: but this kind of thing makes you wonder what is

706
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: it about the blood, because surely it's not it's not

707
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 1: a magical essence. It's not the gladiator strength being carried

708
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 1: through the magical properties of the blood. But it must

709
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:31,760
Speaker 1: be some kind of material that's in the blood that's

710
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: doing this work of rejuvenation in the older mouse's brain.

711
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: So it would be interesting to see if we could

712
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: narrow down what it is in the blood that's causing

713
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 1: this change. And one of the interesting things that you

714
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: mentioned in a note about this is that apparently it

715
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: didn't work if you heat it up the blood plasma, right, Yeah,

716
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:53,720
Speaker 1: So what apparently happens when you heat up the blood

717
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:57,279
Speaker 1: is that it be natures or breaks apart key proteins.

718
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 1: And so there could be some blood borne protein means

719
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,040
Speaker 1: that we've yet to identify and exploit that are are

720
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:06,360
Speaker 1: central to this, uh, this this taking place. Yeah, and

721
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:10,319
Speaker 1: then of course another study has I think identified what

722
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:12,839
Speaker 1: they think are at least one of the key proteins.

723
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:15,960
Speaker 1: That's right. A series of recent Harvard studies and these

724
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 1: are also using the stitch together old young mouse pairs

725
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: and uh. This research headed by stem cell researcher Amy Wagers,

726
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 1: isolated a specific protein from mouse blood growth differentiation factor

727
00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:34,799
Speaker 1: at eleven or g DF eleven, and this seems to

728
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: regulate stem cell activity and it's abundant in young mice,

729
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:40,360
Speaker 1: but it's level drops at the animals a right, So

730
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 1: if you look at blood from a young mouse that's

731
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:44,720
Speaker 1: got plenty of g DF eleven, you look at blood

732
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 1: from an old mouse, it has a lot less. So

733
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 1: this would seem to be something that you could be

734
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 1: re supplying to older mice by giving them the blood

735
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: plasma of younger mice. Yeah, And indeed they found that

736
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:58,280
Speaker 1: injections of d d F eleven can reduce the thickening

737
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 1: of the heart to take with quickly comes with aging

738
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 1: in mice. They've also found that GDF eleven works nearly

739
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:08,280
Speaker 1: as well as parabiosis in helping aging mouth mice recover

740
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,760
Speaker 1: from muscle injuries, and it boost their performance on running

741
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: and grip strength tests. Grip strength huh yeah, grip strength

742
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: little mouse squeezies, I guess. Yeah, so you wouldn't just

743
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: be like a mentally rejuvenated mouse in a in a

744
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,480
Speaker 1: weak decrepit body like it can actually give you some

745
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 1: some juice back to So along with the Easter Island

746
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 1: fungal agent reppams and also known as rapamune by fiser uh.

747
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: Along with that and caloric restriction. Uh, this is one

748
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:46,240
Speaker 1: of only three intervention shown to reverse aging and multiple tissues.

749
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:49,760
Speaker 1: So it's pretty pretty big. Yeah, but we do also

750
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 1: want to show caution here and say that it hasn't

751
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: yet been successfully demonstrated in humans, and that most of

752
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,280
Speaker 1: the researchers who are trying to explain this to the public,

753
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 1: they always want to emphasize that this isn't necessarily like

754
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 1: a way to cheat death. It hasn't been shown to

755
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 1: prolonged life unnaturally. I mean it might if if the

756
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 1: data turns up, but it hasn't been shown to do

757
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: that yet. Instead, it's talking about showing renewed capacity in

758
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 1: certain tissues in older organisms. Yeah. So the more likely

759
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 1: use of this technology, this, uh, this procedure would be

760
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 1: for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, the treatment of heart disease,

761
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 1: as opposed to some sort of futuristic slightly morbid longevity

762
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 1: treatment for the rich and privileged. Uh And and some

763
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 1: of the other caveats that are thrown out there is

764
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 1: the old mice that are used in many of these

765
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: experiments are essentially middle aged mice, and we're not sure

766
00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: what the effects would be if they would be less

767
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 1: pronounced with truly old mice, or indeed with truly old humans.

768
00:43:59,280 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: But the cool thing is that since uh since blood

769
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:06,480
Speaker 1: blood transfusions are routinely given to patients, trials like this

770
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 1: would not be would not have to have um authorization

771
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 1: from the US Food and Drug Administration. Uh So researchers

772
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: can test this out in humans, sooner read it than later. Now.

773
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: Of course, if they're testing this on humans, we're not

774
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: talking about parabiasis, not at all. They wouldn't be uh

775
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 1: so well, I mean, who knows. I really don't think

776
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:28,440
Speaker 1: they would ever be thinking about sewing too humans together,

777
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 1: sewing you together with your grandpa to see if it

778
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 1: if it makes him healthier and you less healthy. And

779
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,440
Speaker 1: another way that this would not be used is drinking blood,

780
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: because that's not what we're talking about. In fact, there

781
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 1: was a funny way I mentioned this in the Forward

782
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: Thinking podcast, but there was a New Scientist article interviewed

783
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 1: a guy named Tony whis Corey who was one of

784
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,239
Speaker 1: the people working on this subject, and they got a

785
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: quote from him where he's like, certainly you can't drink

786
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 1: the blood, although obviously we haven't tried that experiment, so

787
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:03,240
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was trying to say maybe

788
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: you could drink the blood that I don't think. So.

789
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:06,800
Speaker 1: I don't think drinking the blood will do it. It

790
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: seems like it it's uh involving the direct transfusion of

791
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 1: the plasma, specially that g DF eleven, the growth growth

792
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 1: differentiation factor eleven, and then maybe some other elements in

793
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 1: the blood or the plasma. Yeah, I mean it has

794
00:45:21,719 --> 00:45:24,279
Speaker 1: to be circle tory to circulatory, not circular tory to

795
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,760
Speaker 1: gastroid testinal. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. That's like cooking

796
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:32,240
Speaker 1: your electricity up here to your planning system. But speaking

797
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:36,799
Speaker 1: of Tony whist Corey, there is apparently under this particular

798
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: researcher and ongoing project that's studying the effect on human

799
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's patients, and I think this is very interesting. The

800
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:49,880
Speaker 1: last public update I found about this was a Nature

801
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:54,640
Speaker 1: News article from January, so earlier this year, saying that

802
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 1: the experiment had started in September and it was a randomized,

803
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: cebo controlled, double blind trial, UH testing the safety and

804
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: efficacy of using young plasma to treat Alzheimer's disease. That

805
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:10,600
Speaker 1: that was what they said, And then that they said

806
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:13,879
Speaker 1: that six out of eighteen people who had originally been

807
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 1: planned for the experiment, who were all older than fifty,

808
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: had already started receiving the treatment, So they had already

809
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 1: been getting plasma that came from people who were below

810
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 1: the age of thirty. And so we haven't seen the

811
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 1: results of this yet, but I think it's going to

812
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 1: be really really interesting to see how this experiment turns out. Yeah,

813
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,239
Speaker 1: I mean, when you sort of cut away all of

814
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:42,240
Speaker 1: the mythic ghastliness that is built up with the idea

815
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: of reusing human blood or consuming it, or or the

816
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 1: old growing strong and the blood of the young, there's

817
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:51,719
Speaker 1: a lot of there are a lot of wonderful possibilities

818
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 1: here for the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer's and heart disease. Yes, certainly.

819
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 1: Though then again, on the other side, there have been

820
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: other researchers who have been quick to warn that there

821
00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: would be limits to even this type of procedure. Like

822
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:08,399
Speaker 1: let's say that the results on the study come back

823
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:13,000
Speaker 1: and they say, WHOA, Giving older people younger people's blood

824
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 1: has amazing effects even in humans, and it's been shown

825
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 1: in this double blind, placebo controlled trial. Uh, so we've

826
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:24,360
Speaker 1: got a real, very important phenomenon on our hands. Even then,

827
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:26,719
Speaker 1: you might want to show some caution because there was

828
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 1: a quote given to that Nature News piece I was

829
00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 1: talking about from from that that same researcher that I

830
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:37,359
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, Thomas A. Rando, and he said that

831
00:47:37,640 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 1: this could result in too much cell division. He said,

832
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: my suspicion is that chronic treatments with anything plasma drugs

833
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:47,799
Speaker 1: that rejuvenate cells in old animals is going to lead

834
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 1: to an increase in cancer. Even if we learn how

835
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:54,560
Speaker 1: to make cells young, it's something we'll want to do judiciously.

836
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:56,319
Speaker 1: And that makes a lot of sense to me. So,

837
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:58,640
Speaker 1: if you've got a problem, which is that there's not

838
00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: enough cell division and cell growth in the body because

839
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 1: you've gotten old, if you want to fix it by

840
00:48:05,640 --> 00:48:08,960
Speaker 1: spurring lots of cell division and cell growth. That is

841
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:13,720
Speaker 1: what leads to cancer. It's it's the balance of life.

842
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, But then again, I can easily imagine

843
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:19,920
Speaker 1: it's an area where, again this is just speculating, where

844
00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: an older individual has to make that choice. And I'm like, well,

845
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: I could certainly, I can certainly afford to hook this

846
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:30,440
Speaker 1: young person up to meet some of their blood and

847
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a little sharper, my tissue is gonna improve,

848
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:34,920
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feel a little younger, but I'm also going

849
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:38,800
Speaker 1: to be more prone to cancer. You know, we're humans.

850
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 1: We're really suck at weighing a short term versus long term, right,

851
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:44,919
Speaker 1: So I can I can see them saying, you know what,

852
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:47,319
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feel young this week, and I'll worry about

853
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: cancer next week. I guess you could always go back

854
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:52,360
Speaker 1: and forth, right, you could get maybe say, in the future,

855
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:55,359
Speaker 1: we get really really good at treating cancer. So people

856
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 1: are taking way too many stem cells or blood transfusions

857
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:02,560
Speaker 1: from the young get think this rejuvenated effect, but then

858
00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:05,719
Speaker 1: also getting cancer. And then they're just using our strongest

859
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 1: cancer fighting methods to fight off the cancer. And in

860
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: time to get some more rejuvenating juice from the young.

861
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:16,879
Speaker 1: I think that these scenarios, as fun as they are

862
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,319
Speaker 1: to imagine, somehow I don't think it's quite gonna work

863
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 1: out that way, because I I don't want this to

864
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 1: be the case. But what I suspect is that we

865
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:28,320
Speaker 1: will see some result from this, but it will be

866
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: kind of modest, you know. But again, you combine that

867
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 1: with magical thinking, you combine that with the cebo effect,

868
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:39,440
Speaker 1: you combine that with kind of a desperate willingness to

869
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 1: try something. I'm pretty confident you're gonna have some older,

870
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:47,160
Speaker 1: well off individuals. She is going to make this happen

871
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 1: for himself or himself. Uh. One last thing I think

872
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:55,240
Speaker 1: we should say again before the end of this episode is, unfortunately,

873
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 1: if you are reading anything about this, research that up

874
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:00,960
Speaker 1: to this point has said that lud or plasma from

875
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:04,600
Speaker 1: the young will make you live forever unnaturally extend your lifespan.

876
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: So far that is not true. That has not been

877
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:12,360
Speaker 1: shown in any experiment that we could find evidence of,

878
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:18,359
Speaker 1: so for now that ain't the case. Unfortunately. All Right,

879
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:21,400
Speaker 1: So there you have it a little of the history,

880
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 1: the science and mythology of old people drinking young people's blood,

881
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: old people taking young blood into themselves, essentially the curative

882
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 1: properties of young blood. My main takeaway from this is

883
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: I want to drink whatever substance it is that will

884
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:40,160
Speaker 1: help me look like Gary Oldman does at the beginning

885
00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:43,399
Speaker 1: of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. You mean the old bun

886
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,680
Speaker 1: hair or the bun hair the young flashback out of

887
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: version with the with the cool armor. Oh well, well,

888
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 1: either way it would be great. But I mean, see,

889
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:55,479
Speaker 1: if you're Gary Oldman's Dracula, you look great when you're

890
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 1: young and vital, and you look great as an old

891
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 1: decrepit bun hair. Either way, you're awesome. But also you're

892
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,360
Speaker 1: kind of saying as an old person, I want to

893
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:07,279
Speaker 1: look like I have that distinct look of a young

894
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: actor that's been made up to look like an old man,

895
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:16,360
Speaker 1: sort of like the Prometheus version of what's his face? Right? Oh? Oh, no,

896
00:51:16,520 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 1: guy Pierce. And that's the worst makeup job I've ever

897
00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: seen in film. No, Gary Oldman in Coppolis Dracula is

898
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: much better. Are not your ways? Our ways are not

899
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:30,600
Speaker 1: your ways. This is a good place to leave off

900
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:32,040
Speaker 1: with this one. So hey, if you want to check

901
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:33,879
Speaker 1: out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind again,

902
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:35,719
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

903
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship. That's where you'll find blog post galleries,

904
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 1: top ten with us, all the podcast episodes we've ever

905
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: put together at various videos and links out to our

906
00:51:45,560 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: social media accounts, and if you want to get in

907
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:50,239
Speaker 1: touch with us with your thoughts about the consumption of

908
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 1: human blood, you can email us at blow the Mind

909
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this

910
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Because House of Works dot

911
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:05,520
Speaker 1: com h