Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Blood Types

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/podcasters Rivers Langley ('The Goods From The Woods' podcast) and Riley Silverman ('Troubled Waters' podcast, new book 'Star Wars: Exploring Tatooine') for a look at why blood types are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Folks, hello, this is Alex. You are about to hear episode 92 of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Episode 9-2. So I'm here to tell you about the brand new membership drive that I'm running to celebrate episode 100. I only do membership drives like this once a year. And this is a new show, so this is one of the very first drives. I see it as an opportunity to directly ask you to please support the podcast and an opportunity to scale up the benefits that every backer who does support this podcast gets. So I'm doing a bunch of new stuff for every patron of the show.

There's a ton of details over at SifPod.fun. Right now, as I tape this, we are barely hanging on to a goal we reached to pay guests of this show, which has been amazing. I think it's just been a wonderful, wonderful thing. If we can hang on to that and if we can keep growing, the next goal is a workshop where I will share advice on winning game shows. Also, I don't know if I talk about this very much on the show. I won Jeopardy four times. I did that in the Alex Trebek times, not that long ago. So I think I have advice for you. I would love to share that in a workshop that will be exclusive to patrons of this podcast.

And if you've heard this podcast more than once or more than twice or potentially more than 90 times, I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope it's been a great thing for you. I hope you would please consider beginning to back this podcast so there can be a 91st episode, a 92nd episode, all the way to 100 and beyond. It's an independent show, it's entirely dependent on your support, and that support only costs about one US dollar per week, which I think is pretty fair for an amazing show

every week. Thanks for considering that, head to sifpod.fun to join in on the fun, and hey, in the meantime, here's episode 92. Blood types. Known for being positive letters. Famous for being negative letters. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why blood types are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there folks, welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmitz, and I'm not alone. This week I'm joined by Rivers Langley and by Riley Silverman, which is amazing. You may remember Rivers from episodes of this podcast about refrigerators and about cursing, because boy do we do a range of stuff.

Anyway, Rivers Langley is the wonderful host of his own podcast. It is called Goods from the Woods. He's also a fantastic stand-up comedian. If you're hearing this right when it drops, Rivers has stand-up shows this week in Macon, Georgia, Huntsville, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee. So out there in the the southeast go see Rivers do stand up we'll have links for dates and tickets and then Riley Silverman is a guest you may remember from the episode about pears the fruit because again huge range she's a wonderful writer

and comedian and podcaster and also holy cow an author Riley has a book coming out in August of this year. It is called Star Wars Exploring Tatooine, An Illustrated Guide. And the thing is, you have this very funny, very cool, very interesting author doing this book that is primarily aimed at kids, but it's all kinds of amazing art and adventures and other things in a Star Wars universe. It's a lot of fun. Please check it out. Also, we highly recommend getting it from an independent bookseller near you if you possibly can. And pre-orders are how Riley gets to write this book and gets to keep writing books. So if that's at all up your alley,

please consider, you know, locking in a pre-order now. You give yourself a gift later by receiving the book. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Rivers recorded this on the traditional land of the Muskogee or Creek people. Acknowledge Riley recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wurtongva and K'iche and Chumash and Fernandinho-Taraviam peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about blood types. That's one of the patron picks for the month of May. Many, many thanks to listener Gallytrot for that fantastic suggestion. Also, thank you to listener Gallytrot for that fantastic suggestion.

Also, thank you to listener Sexton for cheerleading it in the polls. It's a self-explanatory and fantastic choice for this podcast. So, please sit back or continue donating your blood right at this moment. Thank you for saving a life and also hearing the show. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Rivers Langley and Riley Silverman. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Rivers, Riley, it is so good to have you both back.

And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start. But how do you feel about blood types? Very little, to be honest. I don't even know my own blood type currently. I know that I remember when I was home. So I did the I fled L.A LA for a little bit in 2020 when everyone was locked down. I went home for the summer cause I could work remotely at my job for once in my life.

So I was working in Ohio at my then girlfriend's place and then visiting my family and stuff. And I remember my grandma was like really on it about a certain blood type that she was sure was apparently more effective at fighting COVID than other blood types. Like, I think it was, I think it was typo positive, but I could be wrong about that. And I remember she kept saying, well, I'm this. So I think this is why I've been okay so far or whatever. And then like, are you this? And I'm like, I have no idea. And then I remember the next time I got like blood work done from my doctor, cause I get it regularly being a person of trans experience you

regularly have to have your hormone levels checked which requires blood draws and i i had asked my doctor what my blood type was and he's like oh we don't want to check for that uh but next time you come and get it done we'll we'll check that if you want us to and then i forgot to ask the next time because i also have attention issues and i forgot to ask and so i still don't know no idea gonna be great someday when i'm unconscious and need blood transfusion have attention issues and I forgot to ask. And so I still don't know. No idea. It's going to be great someday when I'm unconscious and need blood transfusion. Wow. Uh, I also have no idea. I have no idea what blood type I am. Uh, I'm sure I'm, I'm actually currently at my parents' house. I'm visiting for a spring break and, uh, doing some shows down here. So somewhere in this room, I bet, is the answer.

But I don't know where it's in your body. It's right in your body. I guess there's two answers in the room. There's a big filing cabinet right behind the computer that I assume has that information. But I don't even know where to begin looking for it. So I don't know. I've I've always assumed I'm AB, which is the universal recipient. You can get anything, but you can't give too much.

Yeah, that sounds like you. Yeah, yeah. That's what I was thinking. That's what they say. But that's science. Blood type matches your personality. Oh, people are just giving and giving. It's exhausting. Blood type matches your personality. You know, Oh, Oh, Oh,

people are just giving and giving. It's exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Perverbial top versus proverbial bottom. Is that, is that too much for this podcast?

Is that going to get edited out? No, I, I love it. Cause there's no curse words. I don't know. What kind of blood type makes you a switch? That's what I need to. Okay. Because there's no curse words. I don't know. What kind of blood type makes you a switch? That's what I need to find out.

Right. Which one goes both? Nintendo. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I'm on TV, sometimes I'm taking it to go. That's my blood type. Yeah.

You know your type, Nintendo, if they try to take the sample and there's just like a little video game noise, like, you know then then that's why yeah they know it doesn't quite work and then they have to blow on it and then it kind of works fine so see i imagine it's the coin noise and as they're drawing it's going oh that's final fantasy sorry different games games I feel very special knowing my blood type on the show but I because I'm o negative and I found out when I started donating blood because that's the consider the universal donor we'll talk more about that but they were they freaked out in a positive way when I was that because a lot of people are that but they they made a point of telling me when I donated blood they were like like, come back. You know, it was a whole thing.

Yeah. I am. I think I'm still forbidden from giving blood because of weird, uh, homophobic and transphobic rules. So. That is also one of the first things I learned when I donated blood. I was doing the questionnaire. I was like, oh, I pretty much have to be cis hat, everything else. Like that's, that's the only way you're allowed in the U.S. Crazy. Yeah. Is there a thing I can fill out at the hospital that says, you know, I don't care.

Just give me anybody's blood if I need it. Like, if I'm bleeding out, it's like you can either have no blood or a trans person's blood. Give me the blood. Give me the blood. You don't want none of that queer blood. Trust me. We're going to keep that from happening. you don't want none of that queer blood. Trust me. We're going to keep that happening. You don't need none of that queer stuff.

I don't wake up, start feeling queer. You don't know why. I don't want no blood that turned me funny. I just like imagining this whole legion of like homophobic down low people in a certain region being just being like, no, no, I wasn't queer,

but then I got a blood transfusion.'s not my fault that's just something that happened good lord put me in that hospital so i must have a reason for it yeah this is making me extra excited for excited for the bonus show because it's going to be all about like myths about what your blood can say about you your blood type really doesn't say anything about personality diet sexuality anything sexuality, anything else. But a bunch of people have come to believe that about blood types. But it's mostly an antibodies immune system thing. That's the main thing going on with blood types.

All right. Which I didn't really know until researching this. Like, I knew very little about why there are blood types, it turns out. And I think most of us don't need to think about it day to day and don't need to have our blood type top of mind. If we need medical help, they'll check our blood type before they give us anything. I guess that makes sense.

I guess they could probably do it pretty quickly. I mean, the only question I have is, which type is most delicious? Well, I think that's like your results may vary. Some people like pineapple and pizza, some people don't. So some people like a type AB, some people like a o negative yeah yeah yeah typo it tastes like ceviche vampires tell me that vampires tell me that they're like you are tart you have mediterranean flair yeah yeah very very exotic i ran a, like a quick, very unscientific Twitter poll.

About 500 people responded. But about 63% of the people who replied said that, yes, it's standard to know your blood type. But only 52% said they do know their blood type without looking it up. It's not a huge difference, but, you know, there's a little bit of a gap there. And I think it's very normal to know it or not know it. It's such a like standard thing about ourselves. And then often we're just like, eh, I don't need, I don't need to be aware of it. Cause nobody asks you. I can go to my website right now. That's like my follow my health page that has all my results from my recent blood work, but it doesn't tell me what my blood type is.

Like I can tell you what my like levels of cholesterol are. I can tell you like exactly how much estrogen is typically in my system, but I couldn't tell you my blood type if you gave me money right now. You could try, but. The other thing I was thinking about going into this is, you know, there are certain podcasts out there that are making big statements about like COVID vaccines and so on. And so do it anything medical on a podcast. I like want to check myself.

I think it's okay for us to have blood type thoughts. Like this is such a basic mechanical, every medical professional can check it thing. Yeah. So it should be fine. We're not doctors and we're just talking about how blood types work. That's it. Alex, I'm about to get you canceled over blood types.

It's going to get shut right down. My opinion. i'm about to get you canceled over blood types it's they're gonna get shut right down my opinion you are about to wreck yourself after you checked yourself my opinions are going to rock the world from what i understand i know that people do get their political opinions from podcasts and are very like staunch about them as a result of that so we should be careful about it you may you may end up having one of us have to apologize about comments we make about a film premiere or something to that regard. And then I just want you to know that if we do say a bunch of really offensive things about Power of the Dog, we will throw you under the bus as a result of it,

just so you know. Just be aware that you will be definitely blamed for doing the podcast you've always been doing, but it'll be our fault, your fault that we did it. We said our own things under our own consent. Are we good? I think we're okay, yeah. This show is hot take positive. Am I right? Boy, oh boy.

Hell yeah. That's what's coming up. Very, very hot take about a thing that happened like three months ago. About the previous awards season. All set. Things are going to go all the way. I think Powered Dogs is going to win the Oscar. Well, Rivers Riley, I think we can get into the first main chunk of the show about these blood types here.

And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... That one song that's like, do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, math! Like, instead of sail, you sing math or stats. Has someone done that? And that Stance of Numbers name was submitted by Daniel O'Brien by doing it on the previous episode. Thank you, Daniel.

We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. And just a few numbers this week about the blood types. The first number is eight. And eight, it's a very general number. It is the super general number of different blood types in humans. We'll get into other kinds later, but in general, there are about eight main blood types for people.

And that's because there are four major blood groups, and they're written out with letters. There's type A, there's type B, there's type AB, and there's type O. So those are the four main ones, and then those come in positive or negative, either a plus or minus on the end. So four times two is eight. That's the set of blood types for most people. Cool. So also, if you don't know yours, I don't know, you have like a one in eight chance of guessing it. So that's pretty cool.

You know, might might nail it. And you can just say whatever. I mean, until it's time to actually give blood or, you know, receive it. You could just make stuff up. Yeah. It's like if you want it, if you want to be a con artist, I think that like a good way to begin your prep to be a con artist is just lie about your blood type because you could say it with confidence. And like once you get comfortable with blood type lying, then you get comfortable with like, oh, I was an heir to this throne, this this European aristocracy. Yeah. thrown this this european uh aristocracy yeah i hope there's a middle trading step of learning the anna delvey accent you know like you like you start just saying your blood type

at a crazy fake german voice this is my blood this is the blood that i have the blood poor i like that i was trying to do delvey and i think i got more dracula as i was gonna say yeah that was uh listen to the creatures of the night what music they make blood type two blood type eight blood time i also remember alex editing this thing when we're done I'm realizing now like is it hard to talk about blood in any accent but a Dracula accent right like the context is so strong It's just the pull

Can't get away from it Yeah Somewhere you're gonna have the count Bella the ghost he's gonna show up We all we all logged out of the zoom by moving the candle holder and then the wall rotated and then we were here we actually don't see each other because our images can't be recorded on film so yeah that's right you see we're all just looking at zoom of blank empty rooms oh that's a that's right that's a far side comic you've just written there right that's just four blank uh things vampire zoom that's high praise

i'll take that oh that's great i might yeah and he's writing currently like we beat him to it there's oh that's right yeah take it larson lars man should come back sooner vampire zoom should have been there two years ago when you came back. Vampire Zoom. And as far as what those notations mean, like I'd heard of A, B, and O and positive and negative, but I didn't know what that was. Turns out all these blood types are based on the antigens in red blood cells. And an antigen is a substance that can trigger an immune response. It's a protein on the outside of a red blood cell.

And so the notation is pretty simple. If somebody's type A, their blood has A antigens. Type B is B antigens. AB is both. And O is neither of them. And then later on, people discovered another human blood antigen called rhesus group d and the name comes from a belief that has peanut butter and chocolate combined into one blood type two two great antigens that taste great together yeah yeah you got a blood in my b blood but then

it's really bad then it's actually really dangerous then we have to call someone needs to get a doctor here to get this fixed we need to do an emergency transfusion we need to drain all the blood out of this body and put new blood in we need to keith richards this person immediately does that is that the urban legend section i gotta talk about that oh i i don't did he get an emergency full transfusion i don't know this urban legend is supposedly to get off heroin keith richards got rid of all of his blood and filled himself up with uh with new blood that was that was like uh that's like uh you know that's

that's back in the the richard gear gerbil uh you know pantheon sure yeah i'm so sad i know what richard gergerville means uh but i do well yeah i mean i feel like it's it is textbook weird celebrity rumor to know like i think it's one of the first celebrity rumors we all learned when we were younger and like so i think i think it's okay it was like one of the things that we get referenced in movies and stuff like that. So yeah. Rod, Rod Stewart, stomach pumping, you know, et cetera. Yeah. Back in that era where like the only website any of us went to was Snopes. Yeah. Go find out about these things.

And they'd already been told for years prior to that. Right. Back when that was Snopes did that. Yeah. Snopes is now like debunking weird political things most of the time. But it used to be Snopes was like a categoryopes was a category of, not a category, an archive of all the weird urban legends, both the murder ones, like, oh, hook hand on car door kind of stuff, but also, yeah, Richard Gere Gerbel and Keith Richardson, all those names.

And they would tell you all the different celebrities that had been attributed to before it stuck with this one big name. Right. Right. Is whoever runs snopes sitting in their office like how am i part of democracy now like why am i the infrastructure of the government right this is a mess yeah what a weird evolution of a website um what was that yeah and so think of the reeses uh the the name here is r-h-e-s-u-s like rhesus monkeys the name rhesus d it comes from a belief that we share this exact antigen and blood with

rhesus monkeys it turns out that's not quite true but the name stuck and either way the rhesus d antigen is the positive negative part of a blood type so if you have that antigen you're positive if you don't you're negative and it's an antigen like the a and the b okay i was hoping the rhesus monkey guy got out of monkey as it went into blood you know that was his second phase he's like well unrelated but it's his name it's like it's like dude dude i got a monkey named after me man i'm going into something else i hit you love monkeys, you're going to love blood. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's like Drew Barrymore. She used to do acting, and now she does a talk show.

Monkeys to blood. It's a natural progression. My mom has an ear fryer from Drew Barrymore. So, yeah. Is that true? Oh, I need to get a Drew Barrymore. I got it for her for christmas oh i love it i it's a walmart exclusive i suddenly need that very badly

wow it's pretty cute it's probably great yeah my mom loves it yeah so that is so that is every everyone who has a blood type has a rhesus like antigens that's either positive or negative that's basically oh yeah like okay yeah it's not positive or negative? That's basically. Yeah. Like, OK. Yeah. It's not it's not like a ninth or tenth blood type. It is it is something that's present or not present in all blood types. Yeah, pretty much. And the way I said that makes it sound really present or not present. So that sounds like.

So you're saying if you have it, you're positive. You don't have it. You're negative. Yeah. Yeah. And the only reason it's not described as a letter is it was just discovered by scientists at a different time than when we were discovering the lettered ones. Like all these A's, B's, pluses, minuses, they're all just names people chose. They could be any name at all.

Gotcha. Man. Yeah, I love the idea of a primatologist being the one. He's not, but it's great. but it's great. And, and yeah, and then it's very important for medical professionals to check your blood type before they give you blood or try to donate your blood. Because if a person receives blood with antigens that they lack, antigens are something that basically triggers an immune reaction. And so if you're given blood with antigens that you lack, that can make your body attack the blood

it can clump it and put a bunch of clots in your blood and that reaction can be fatal pretty often so it's very important for them to get that right so don't just go do like home transfusions or whatever it's not a good idea obviously but fine one more thing i can't do from home. Fine, Alex. Re-enter society, I guess. The government is shutting down my homespun blood transfusion operation just because I'm not checking tops. It's like a still. Another small business

killed by Obama. Buddy's blood world is having to shutter its doors. Drain the swamp and drain my blood and make it happen for America. And also, I didn't know how much it takes in researching. NPR interviewed a hematologist. That's someone who handles blood. It's Dr. Christine Serti-Gadzowicz of the University of Toronto. She says a transfusion of the wrong blood where it's as little as 50 milliliters, which is 1.7 fluid ounces, that little can be fatal.

Wow. Again, very important. And every medical professional on Earth knows this. I don't need to tell anyone. But it's amazing how little your your body will freak out about as far as the wrong blood type. I'm surprised there's not more murders like that where someone like covertly ejects someone with the wrong blood and see what happens. Yeah, I have some stuff to do. No, it's. Yeah, I have some stuff to do. No, it's... There must be a reason why it wouldn't be that easy to do that I'm not thinking about, but yeah. So you're telling me at the blood bank,

whoopsie-doos are not allowed? Yes. There's no whoopsie-doodles? They got to be extra careful to avoid whoopsie- do's yeah i think they would focus more on that and less on the uh discrimination but you know yeah yeah time is money yeah well and uh and then with these eight blood types people may know this but there's two relatively special ones where like i said at the top if you're o negative you're considered the universal donor because you don't have the AB or rhesus antigens.

And then if you are AB positive, you're considered the universal receiver because you have all three of those antigens. So they won't affect you badly if you get them because you've already got them all there anyway. Exactly. Yeah. So like if I need blood, I can only really get it from O negative people. Luckily, there's a lot of them, a B positive people can get it from anybody. That's the one I'm lying about that. I say I am. You're like,

I give it to me and we'll find it out in the wash. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good starting con by the end of the episode, rivers is going to be taking our wallets. He's going to be selling us some NFTs that aren't real.

It's going to be good. Blood, the ultimate nft we could we call it the clot chain fan i'm a fan of that yeah Well, and the next number here is 13. 13. That is the general number of blood types found in dogs. We are not going to talk about non-apes very much on this episode, but it felt worth checking in with because according to a TED-Ed video by Natalie S. Hodge, dog blood has 13 different main types of antigens and then further differentiation from there. Also going to link to National Geographic about animal blood in general. Main thing to know here is that apes, including humans, share these ABO blood types, but the rest of the animal kingdom and was going to say plants, but no, the rest of the animals,

they have very different blood from us. Whole different thing. Can humans get blood transfusions from apes? I couldn't find any evidence of that happening. It's similar, but also it seems like it's different enough because it turns out there are a whole bunch of different antigens that it would probably be pretty dangerous. But that until the 1900s, that was an open question. It was like, can we give people any kind of blood? It's all blood, right? It all pumps around.

People didn't know. Yeah. Well, that's I mean, speaking of Dracula, that's a scene in Dracula where Lucy is like wasting away and everybody in the room starts giving her blood. And that's always the part of the book where I'm like, you are not do that. That's yeah, it seems dangerous. That works. Yeah, I think they do it in the movie too with keanu reeves and his hilarious uh in an english accent uh oh my god it's so good yeah like all the men in the room start pumping their blood into this lady

and you're like i isn't there a test you should do before that like i didn't know until this conversation what could go wrong but i figured it wasn't good yeah that you you really have to check and people didn't know until like recently they were like blood's blood whatever that's why she died it wasn't because of the vampire it was because of all the dirty kianu blood that she got it's like they're like okay the blood party went really badly we need to make up a cover story about like uh what would we call it a vampire guy on the hill vampire let's do that yeah i read this book carmella and i thought what if i took that idea and made it what happened to our friends yeah that that guy that tom waits is always screaming about in the

asylum that dude did it by the way best use of tom waits ever in a movie and i'm a big fan of his but boy him is renfield perfect casting choice francis ford coppola well done ray he's he's already out in la or something screaming in an asylum you just start rolling you've got the scene you know they actually they rented the asylum he lives in uh you've got the scene you know they actually they rented the asylum he lives in uh to film the movie so he didn't actually have to leave home right right just uh just him and the corny going bastard oh fantastic that it's that movie is uh it's it's nearly perfect and it's on topic because it's about blood that's right yeah yeah it's kind of it's kind of and it's on topic cause it's about blood. That's right.

Yeah. It's kind of, it's kind of amazing. There was so much blood drinking fiction before anybody knew how putting blood in other people works. You know what I mean? Like kind of elite, kind of wild. Yeah.

And I, I knew the, uh, the Latin, uh, prefix Hema because there was a band, a very good, uh,

instrumental metal band in my hometown shout out to hematovor oh blood eaters yeah solid name hell yeah that's pretty sick i've heard like hemophage as like a sci-fi version of vampires like people who have like in sci-fi works like they call like a vampire hemophage yeah and then of course like if you if you get excited enough about history at some point you learn about hemophiliac royal families where they're all like bleed to death if they get bumped wrong and it's like oh they shouldn't be the leaders of russia or whatever that's not a good idea at all yeah i i guess i did find out about uh nikolai before i found out about this metal band but you know one of them really stuck. Yeah. The bass player always rocking the cargo shorts, no matter what, no matter the temperature.

Probably a cooler guy than Nikolai. I'm going to put it out there. The hot takes start now, folks. He was definitely better than playing bass. Well, the last number here brings us into the first takeaway. The last number is 1900. The year 1900. That is when medical science first published something about blood types.

And let's go into takeaway number one. We've only known about blood types for about a century. Yeah. They are weirdly recent. a century yeah they are they are weirdly recent it revolutionized medical care the the transfusions we think of for basically every surgery or lots of other care it just wasn't a practically possible thing until the 1900s wow that doesn't shock me as much because i know that like a lot of medical stuff that we have is relatively recent like i think like vaccines and things like that and like in general the idea like it used to be like almost all medical stuff vaccines and things like that and like in general the idea like

it used to be like almost all medical stuff was surgery and like that was kind of like we were cutting things out and that was all we knew how to do with people and now like we like then we learned about like internal medicine and things like that but i think so that that doesn't shock me as much as i thought it would i i kind of felt like that was something that would require microscopes and that kind of equipment so that that doesn't shock me oh yeah i i was that's interesting because yeah dracula is from 1897 so that's three years before but they're actively doing blood transfusions in that so i'm wondering if people were just winging it uh before or you know huh yeah i mean i think people knew about blood as a medical thing prior to that because you have centuries of people using like leeches and things like that to suck out toxins and things like that so and i think i

think vampires like blood being a life essence and vampires draining that out was like a pretty like understood thing and there's like references to blood like in biblical texts and things like that right right well and 1897 would kind of line up because this was published in 1900. They had to do experiments before that. Like, I don't know for sure at all. And we'll link about it if I find out. But maybe Bram Stoker was on top of like current cutting edge medicine when he was writing that in 1897. That's true.

I'm sure they were doing blood transfusions before they knew blood types, but they probably had more deaths as a result of them because people were already like sick and ill. And they were like, well, just give them blood. If they die, like, ah, they still didn't pull out or they, you know, the disease overtook that they probably didn't realize the blood transitions.

What was killing them? Yeah. They give them a little taste first and just see how it goes. Like, like how you do an edible, you know? All right. I'm going to,

I'm going to take a bite and wait, see how high this gets me. I'm going to do a little tiny drop of blood and see how, see how it messes me up. Right. Y'all doing blood in here? What's the definitely fatal level? 50 milliliters?

I'll do 49. I'll do 49. 49. Quick. I'll do 50 micro doses of milliliters of blood and see how long it takes. I'm on micro dosing blood right now. Yeah. Hemo dosing blood right now yeah hemo hemo dosing

key sources here are mosaic science magazine an article by carl zimmer also a piece for smithsonian by aaron wayman and then the nobel prizes website because this entire concept the the person mainly credited with discovering it is a guy named Karl Landsteiner. And Karl Landsteiner was an Austrian doctor and biochemist. He was born in 1868. And he published the first official scientific work defining some human blood types in the year 1900. And his first paper called the types A, B, and C. He later renamed C c to o and that's really the person who discovered like most of the major blood groups we have a b and o wow there you go carl yeah yeah that's this is not that far removed from when people weren't even washing their hands

you know to operate on people so you, things are happening fast. Yeah, I wonder if like the 1890s or so felt wild medically. It was like, oh, lots, lots, lots of patients die all of a sudden because several people are figuring out the basics of medicine. Great. Right, right. Yeah, that's pretty much the period that I am most fascinated with historically is from basically from the moment Lincoln dies to about 1900. That tends to just be the thing that never gets covered in school you never learn about any of this stuff and then you once you start kind of reading about it on your own you're like this is kind of when everything was happening like good and bad our world was really to find yeah our world was being

solidified like that was you know lincoln lincoln's death was like the jello was boiling on the stove and then the next uh you know the next like 50 years is it going in the fridge and slowly solidifying into the uh staggeringly awesome and terrifying awful world that we have now it was sort of all happening metaphor right then yeah and now we're all jello i for some reason i imagined toary todd lincoln at that stove like solemnly taking the jello that i don't know why i'm sorry mary todd i'm sure i would think she already had to deal so much alex why are you still taking her down she just wanted the jello she had a hard week yeah she comes in and she trips and falls on red Jell-O,

and then it's all over her, and it reminds her too much of being at the Ford Theater. She's just like, not again! That's actually why she went mad. A lot of people thought it was because of the original trauma, but it was the re-traumatizing of her. That's right. The jiggling.

I see the jiggling on the back of my eyelids when I go to sleep. They made sure to keep Jackie Onassis away from all Jell-O The jiggling. I see the jiggling on the back of my eyelids when I go to sleep. Yeah. They made sure to keep Jackie Onassis away from all Jell-O following Dallas. They knew what had happened to Mary Tom Lincoln. Like, we're not doing this again. You already lost one first lady this way. William McKinley at the exposition, the booth for Jell-O. He's observing and checking it out.

Gunman. Boom. Done. James Garfield hated Mondays and jello jello secretly the cause destruction of all yeah wow let me just uncrack that conspiracy here yeah murder in the murder inside of it or what it fruit in the middle murder in the middle yeah yeah murder at the bottom fruit on top anyway uh sorry presidents and uh and their wives uh yeah well uh and land steiner, so he discovers AB and what became O. Other researchers quickly built on that to discover AB, you know, all put together. And then another researcher, Philip Levine in America, is credited with discovering the rhesus blood factor, the plus minus in the 1930s.

in the 1930s. And so, you know, the first work is in 1900, but we really only start to get the full main eight blood types in the 1930s. And in 1930, the League of Nations passes a resolution adopting the names that we're used to. And Lance Steiner receives the Nobel Prize in 1930 for medicine, for blood types. All of that advancement, and I have taken advantage of none of it because I don't know my blood type. Yeah. But the advancement is so strong that you don't have to know your blood type because people who are doing medicine can tell you for you. That's true. Yeah, that is the luxury, I suppose, of technology. It's like, yeah, someone smarter than me will figure it out.

Yeah. technology is like yeah someone else will figure someone smarter than me will figure it out yeah i find it's a situation where if you have to answer for someone what your blood type is in order in time you're probably already done because there's not enough time for whatever like if it's not enough time to test your blood type before they get more blood for you you're probably screwed right right yeah yeah it's like knowing how a car works or something like there's enough professionals around me who i can google who know you know yeah it's all right but i got curious why i donated blood and they were like okay here you go but you have to remember to ask it's like it's it's sort of kind of like rally with your doctor like they don't just tell you you have to bug them yeah it's like when you go to get like visual prescription like you have to ask them to give you the prescription instead of them trying to sell you glasses yeah got it yeah

although blood types don't try to sell you blood things but still yeah hey while you're here let me tell you about a fascinating opportunity for a b negative see i i avoid that confusion by having literally the same pair of glasses that i've had since high school so yeah you might want to get that looked at well no no no i mean i get the lenses changed out as my vision gets worse but oh nice but same frames you know that's clever yeah it ain't broke don't fix it you know yeah i avoid it by buying glasses from websites that sell them for much cheaper than right ones that are owned by what's that company whatever target in my case target no there's um there's a company that own i know this is not the sif on selling glasses but there's like a monopoly that owns almost

every glasses store and then like and like when like they literally lexotica yeah and they put they put oakley out of business and then bought Oakley because Oakley was like, we're not going to fall in line to your plan. We're going to like sell glasses for cheaper. And then like, well, you're not going to sell glasses at all anymore. And it was very wild. And Oakley rode away on a skateboard and gave him the finger. No, no. They own Oakley.

Now they bought Oakley and took over their. Oh, yeah. OK. Yeah. I want there to be a movie about it where everybody in the boardroom for oakley is wearing oakley's you know like you just can't take them seriously yeah business all their all their plans are revealed because they're being mirrored on the glasses they're wearing and they can see all the documents right and at oakley

every everyone's typo we're all positive over here o positive over the top yeah just so thrilled imagining oakley people claiming they have that blood because it sounds good like they keep getting wrong transfusions they keep dying from blood clots because they're not getting o positive blood this is not radical dude this is not radical at all worth it falls off skateboard if you're o negative you're fired from the company that's why i'm not there anymore couldn't yeah couldn't stay but yeah and then so we have this world before 1900 where medicine lacks this tool carl zimmer's piece for mosaic goes way into it he says says that doctors, as early as the European Renaissance, you know, 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, they came up with the general idea

of, hey, if someone like lost a lot of blood, maybe it would be helpful to give them new blood really quickly and save their life that way. But when they attempted it, they usually killed the patient because they didn't know the blood type. Like, you know, it wasn't a perfect dream. Like in Dracula. Yeah. Yeah, and they might not have been working in totally sterile conditions, and some of them did think all blood was the same and try animal blood, but the main problem was just not knowing blood types like we do easily now. So as recently as the 1800s, doctors were scared of doing it. easily now. So as recently as the 1800s, doctors were scared of doing it. Apparently also there were some late 1800s doctors who were still trying to push the envelope on this, even though we

didn't know about blood types. There was a British doctor named James Blundell who came up with an elaborate system for funneling blood relatively safely. And he only used human blood, which was like a choice at the time, but he only got to perform 10 transfusions in his whole career. And only four of the patients lived because most of the time the blood types didn't line up. That's just how it went. I mean, it's it is what it's essentially Russian roulette, right? With with a cylinder gun. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. If you don't know the blood type, you're like, well, this is, you know, I better get lucky here. It's Russian roulette. Only all but one chamber has a bullet in it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I guess. Basically, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Or it's like different bullets for different people. Some people are impervious to certain bullets. Some people aren't. Yeah. It's a perfect analogy. I'll stop yeah it's not it's not let's just put it this way it's not quite as good of a metaphor as

as jello no it's up there no yeah and uh there were also there were some late 1800s doctors who were trying like things they thought would fix this that weren't blood types and one of them was to do blood transfusions where you include cow milk because they thought like oh cow milk will like chill this out it's so smooth and i don't know that seems like it would work and it obviously didn't it made the transfusions much more lethal but there were people before they knew about blood types they were like what's every way we can push the envelope of this? Because if the transfusions didn't kill people all the time, that would clearly be good. That would be a revolution in medicine.

The milk makes it go down easier, I guess, is the thought. I don't know. Yeah, basically. Yeah. It's so gross. And it didn't work. But they tried it. Yeah.

It's so gross and it didn't work, but they tried it. Yeah. And then, and also by the 1800s, a lot of these experiments were done with, it was kind of done on the fly when a patient came in who was basically definitely going to die. It was the kind of thing where you either try this super dangerous transfusion or they die either way. That was a lot of what these experiments involved. Yeah. Also, you got to be careful doing

experiments on flies because then the fly takes over the human body and the human takes over the fly's body and then the fly later is like help me and it's like really creepy yeah but you're real sexy in the middle part right and all kinds of sex maybe pretty cool but then there's then you have a son in a sequel and then it's like really weird yeah but and so yeah and so transfusions they start to become common in the early 1900s entirely thanks to the discovery of blood types landsteiner's test was to just take a bit of a patient's blood you mix that with other blood outside the body and see if it clumps. And that's still a pretty common, quick method of testing blood types. That's pretty easy and not hard to do. If it clumps, that's bad. It means the types are not working together. And also in 1902, Landsteiner and a collaborator published the first paper talking about how blood

types could be used in forensic science for solving crimes. So blood types also give us this whole new crime solving thing as soon as we know about them. Right. Yeah. The classic John Mulaney thing where the cop finds, oh, we have a gallon of the suspect's blood. Ooh, gross. And then they throw it away. Yeah. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife.

I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. are. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls.

Well, with the bloods here, we can get into takeaway number two for the main show. Takeaway number two. There are eight main blood types, but we're also still discovering new blood types all of the time. That makes sense. It turns out there are all kinds of different rare specific blood types popping up all over the world. And it's just a constant process of discovering them.

Yeah, that makes sense because there are lots of different types of people and lots of different ways that people over the years have genetically combined. And so then the results of those are going to be different than other people. So I imagine that the 1900s discovery of blood types up until the 1930s were probably really white. I'm saying I imagine it's a lot of very, very white people blood. And I'm guessing as you add more ethnicities to the mix, you're probably getting a lot more like a wider spectrum of what humanity is capable of and physically doing. You know, that that seems pretty much true. The first main story of a rarer blood type here was discovered in Mumbai, India, which used to be called Bombay. So it was described as the Bombay phenotype. And it's still mostly common in South Asia.

Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, it's pretty easy to assume that any sort of discovery medical wise happening prior to like last year is pretty white centric so yeah back when colleges were exclusively people who were male and white and like full of scotch yeah like yeah right right if any medical thing is not white prior to i I would say, now, there's also probably a horrific scandal about it, too. There's probably some horrible human rights violation, like the Tuskegee experiment or something like that. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

A lot of eugenics being floated around at that time as well. Yeah. We have this turn-of-the-century thing where ABO gets discovered and then the rhesus antigen, the plus minus in the 1930s. But there are many rare blood types beyond those. A blood type is considered rare if fewer than one in a thousand people have it on Earth, which is still a lot of people. Like one in a thousand is millions. But one of the first rare types was type HH. That's two lowercase H's.

This is the one in Mumbai, India. It was discovered in 1952. People who are type HH do not have any of the ABO antigens, so they can only accept blood from other people with that type HH. It's a separate system. Oh, interesting. Wow. And with this and many other rare types, it's the idea of a universal donor.

It turns out is kind of a myth. Like I'm here being O negative and all proud of myself, but I can't give blood to people who have type HH and there are thousands of them. It's, it's pretty common. And I'll never need to do that. Other people will handle the blood transfusions. So it's fine. Well, you, well, you should be ashamed.

Yeah. Yeah. How dare you? I have no idea if I can get blood then. Yeah, I know. I'm so useless. I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I can help him out.

Who knows? Yeah. And then the discoveries have kept coming. There are at least a few dozen rare blood types that more than a tiny handful of people have. They pretty much all involve different sets of rare antigens. And with human blood types in general, it's basically just an immune system difference. Otherwise, we're all people and we're all humans, homo sapiens. But one example of a rare one is an antigen called VEL. It's just spelled V-E-L, more than 99.9% of people have that antigen. But that means that one out of about every 2,500 people lack the VAL antigen and can't get blood from everybody else. So there

are tons of people on earth who have super rare blood types and know that they can only get blood from specific people who share it. So they just have to carry their own blood around in a backpack basically yeah i got my bags i got my bags back to the back whenever i travel internationally bring my blood with me just in case it'll be cooler yeah yeah like almost yeah and and that's also part of like when it apparently when someone dies of a mix up with a transfusion one thing they check for is did this person have an incredibly rare blood and we just missed it? Because they check this postmortem. Sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah. Tragically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's going on. Okay.

So I am going to figure out what blood type I am now. You've scared me sufficiently. I might. Are you afraid you might have the the the moon by who knows i might be hh you know yeah you might go to chicago and build a mansion who knows but yeah yeah and also it turns out a lot of these super rare blood types one piece of good news is they tend to be relatively geographically specific like the genetics will be in a place and yeah the hh type is specific to south asia another example is one

that is called diego it's most common among native people in the americas and also most common among some east asian people like these these super rare ones are often a situation where like a doctor in that region will be checking for it because it pops up enough that it's a thing to watch for see when you know i think sorry oh no i was just gonna say when you said diego i was like right back to the oakley boardroom dude oh positive i'm diego though san diego i was thinking i was thinking that diego stonhut's french fries in it. But I also think that I was going to say, but I'm wondering if because of the continuing globalization of the world, like I wonder how much more of an issue that's going to become in the next like generation as like people who might have been born in Mumbai would then move to London or New York or other places in the world for business reasons or for just typical migration and now be like, oh God, now I have to be like constantly aware that my blood

type is not common in this region. Hopefully there's like enough more like banks of it stored up somewhere. That sounds plausible. Yeah. Cause you're right. There's just increasing interconnectedness. I also, I think we can jump into the final takeaway for the main episode cause it's good news about that.

And final takeaway here the main episode because it's good news about that. And final takeaway here is takeaway number three. Rare blood gets searched for and shipped all over the world in amazing ways. It turns out there is a global network of organizations that will like find people with rare blood, solicit donations and then get it to the few other people who need it it's really cool unless you're queer and then you cannot touch it right and then you're doomed but yes is that is is that just here like the the transphobic it's mostly in america okay i know that uk loosened their rules a little bit okay uh for like the british like things so okay i'm sure there's parts of the world but like we look we'll take all the blood we can get we'll test it for diseases it's fine like yeah yeah i would imagine so it's like yeah i feel like you can test for disease it's not you know i don't know it seems really stupid i feel like this is the real life like barrier of

of the tv series true blood like this idea of like having having blood type because in true blood the like catalyst for the story in the series was that a like japanese uh scientists invented synthetic blood yeah that like then vampires were able to bottle and sell as a bottled substance called true blood right they would drink instead of drinking human blood that's like why they were able to then come out of the coffin and be public and that was like that's that's the phrase they use so that's fascinating that like there is like almost almost up to this point of like once we can create synthetic blood and like this will solve all these problems whatever but like and that was okay that was a weird tangent well no no i uh i was also gonna

say i uh a friend of mine uh my buddy rayvvon, who lives in Nashville, that's his gig. He's a delivery guy for like for true blood. Yeah, for for vampire blood. No, for for organs and for blood and stuff like that. So he drives that stuff around. So he's a truck driver for organs and blood and stuff like that. I can't imagine a more stressful job than having like an organ in your truck while you're like stuck in traffic well

this this is why he got the job is because he was a convoy driver in afghanistan before that he was when he was in the army so when he got back he's like oh well i drove convoys across afghanistan i can handle nashville you know yeah not as many IEDs in Nashville exactly Nashville like some some hot chicken and that's about it right yeah yeah yeah yeah too many tempting stops for chicken that's true there's I do feel like being a blood delivery guy is probably a lot better pay than being a like door dash driver I'm sure like I can stiff for tips as much from the hospital when you're dropping blood off that needs to be like putting someone to save their life right right although you do get yelled at more if you're late you know yeah because someone's dying yeah

i don't know i think i think you might get i think there might be a pretty like over under on who gets yelled at more for being late is the blood guy or the entitled people who are ordering food that's true oh that's a good experiment yeah blood delivery guy and in a regular city or uber eats in beverly hills who gets yelled at more only only less now because of your contact free delivery right right now i'm imagining a blood delivery person being upset that the very, very unwell person who needs the blood didn't also tip. They're distracted, man. You didn't give them five stars.

Only gave them four stars. Your life was saved. Why didn't I get the fifth star? Or imagine a delivery guy knocking on the door of a hospital and dropping the blood off in front of the hospital and leaving and taking a picture of it. I dropped it off. And then the person's like, this is positive we were looking for a negative oh the wrong i picked the wrong bag up from the from the blood blood bank there was a rack with names on it and i grabbed the one that was by your name i'm sorry the blood bank is a tired line cook with a bunch of paper receipts like okay wait you were you were uh actually during

the pandemic a lot of ghost blood banks opened up and uh there's like lots of random places but you know actual ghosts because the vampire yeah now we're getting spooky i'm gonna save this for halloween now it's going great yeah we'll just We'll just hold it. We won't hold it. But yeah, there's a whole world network of organizations that track rare blood. And I feel like computers especially and the internet has really ramped this up because you can store information and transmit it fast. But key sources here are The Atlantic, an article by Penny Bailey, Atlas Obscura, an article by Jenny Bangham, and a Smithsonian piece by Daniel A. Gross. According to Atlas Obscura, 1951 was the first time there was an organization for tracking rare bloods. It was

called the Blood Group Center. It was based in London. In 1954, they put out a text called The Distribution of the human blood groups that collated data from 50 countries. And then from there, other organizations started in other countries, and then they, you know, just started working together. And then now we have a global network that will like, try to find out if somebody has amazingly rare blood, get in touch with them and get them looped into the system. That's cool. I like there's that much cooperation and global exchange or something like that. It's so rare to hear. So many times, different countries are all competing with each other over materials or information.

And that was a big problem they were having with even COVID treatments, where it felt like one country wasn't getting vaccines that it once were and things like that. So it's good this This is actually has. And I'm sure it's not because of individual doctors not wanting to share. I'm sure it's because there's like systems in place that are preventing them to. But like this is nice. There's like something like that that's set up. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. And then the like most prime example of the system working is with what might be the rarest blood type, which is also just a fun fact to know. There's a probable rarest blood type in the world for people. It's what's called Rh null, because it's a blood type that lacks any antigens in the Rh system. And there are a bunch of them beyond just the one plus minus one. It's so rare, it was not discovered until 1961. It was not discovered until 1961. And historically, apparently as of 2014, only 43 humans have ever been documented with this blood. That's me, actually.

Believe it or not, that one's actually me. You're going to find out that you have it. You just forgot for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as of 2014, only 43 people ever documented to have it. The first person was an Australian First Nations person. I was going to ask if it was like mostly people connected to like one particular community or if it was like a really like isolated indigenous group or something. Yeah, it seems to just be so rare. It's just surprising. The most amazing story here of a donation is also based in Australia, though.

In 2014, there was a newborn baby in Australia who needed a blood donation. Doctors checked and found out the baby has Rh null blood. There was no other person in the entire country of Australia at the time who had this blood type. And so Australian authorities made a worldwide request. A British database turned up an american donor there was a american group called the american rare donor program they facilitated a donation and a 7 000 mile shipment of blood to save the baby and it worked out they just oh they just shipped the blood they should at least give you an all expense paid trip to australia if

you're gonna do all that right that would be pretty cool like yeah that would rock actually that would be a great incentive program to get more people in the database like hey if you're the rare type you're gonna get several free trips around the world to go see see cool places and and drain your blood here's the problem with that plan rivers i get where you're going with it but australia is a continent designed to kill people so i think like that's the problem is what happens if you send this person to australia to donate their blood and then they get eaten by a snake before they get to the hospital and now there's no one left to give blood to this baby so i feel like they have to they really have to like it's easier to ship blood than a person because you can put like

a container truck that is protected from snakes and other australian death machines at all times there's no magpies coming in and point that right the guy the guy gets off the plane and he's waving like the beetles and then a frilled lizard just attaches to his neck and a kangaroo kicks him in the head he's like hey i was here to help bird just picks him up and carries him away and feeds him to its young. Yeah. Like, the flight attendant is like, welcome to Australia, and then they pull their mask off. They're a dingo. They were a dingo this whole time. Attack the person. Devour them. The dingo ate my baby's blood donut.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all right. It's a Don Shime. Oh, well. I like thinking about the world this way the world is full of some people who know they have incredibly rare blood and are looped into a system to try to spread it as efficiently as possible and they go mad with power yeah and my favorite story of it comes from this Atlantic article. They talk about a Swiss donor named Thomas who has RH0 blood. And so he does a thing where he's been encouraged to drive across the border to France to do his blood donations because that like saves one custom step.

saves one custom step because then his blood can be sent straight from the european union instead of having to get out of switzerland and cross another border that way and he and and he gets a free tablerone for his uh for his effort i don't know i don't know what else is in switzerland besides tablerones he gets a knife knife he gets a swiss army knife yeah it's got a it's got a spoon on it that's pretty cool toothpick toothpick very helpful little tiny scissors yeah or they're like he can't have the knife his blood's too important anything could happen you don't want him playing the knife and stabbing himself by accident he He's the one Swiss person not allowed. Okay.

Get it. Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Rivers Langley and Riley Silverman for sharing personal stuff about their blood. Right? That's a little bit of a disclosure. I did it too. Felt safe doing it with you folks. Really good. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related

to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is a strange set of myths that are out there about what a person's blood type dictates about them. Short answer, basically nothing. But we'll get into it. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than seven dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. Also, I don't know if it's clear every week, but when I say this entire podcast operation, that is kind of a joke, right? Because it's me making the show and wearing all the hats, doing all the parts. Chris Souza is very helpful with the audio mastering and gets compensated for that. Other than that, it's just me. And so if you can possibly help this extremely independent podcast stay on the air, continue to happen by backing it, that would be wonderful.

And if you do it right now, it's part of a membership drive where there are more benefits than ever. Please consider doing that. And hey, thank you for exploring blood types with us. Mine is O negative, yours is that or something else. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, we've only known about blood types for about a century. Takeaway number two, there are eight main blood types, and we're still constantly discovering new blood types all the time. And takeaway number three, rare blood gets searched for and shipped all over the world in amazing ways.

Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Rivers Langley is the host of The Goods from the Woods. Fantastic podcast. Very funny people. Actual research, too. And a real Southern flavor to it, which is extra great.

Speaking of the South, Rivers Langley is touring there right now. On May 5th, you can see him in Macon, Georgia at Grant's Lounge, May 6th, Huntsville, Alabama at Liquor Express, and May 7th, Nashville, Tennessee at Smoker's Abbey. All of those venues have such cool names. Wow. Please go to them and please support his work. And then Riley Silverman is a wonderful comedian podcaster so much more. Highly recommend her actual play podcast called The Game of Rassilon, where they do a Doctor Who role-playing game.

And hey there, do you like Star Wars? Or do you just like fun, beautiful books of art that are for the whole family? Well then check out Star Wars Exploring Tatooine and Illustrated Guide. That's an upcoming book written by Riley Silverman. If you pre-order it, that probably allows Riley to continue doing these kinds of things. And if you pre-order from your local independent bookstore, that helps them stay in business. Hey, great. They already got a sale. Awesome. So please consider doing that. Again, the book is Star Wars, Exploring Tatooine, an Illustrated Guide. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article for Mosaic Science Magazine that is by Carl Zimmer. Lean on a couple of great Smithsonian pieces this week, one by Aaron Wayman and another by Daniel A.

Gross, plus tons more material from The Atlantic, National Geographic, the Nobel Prizes Organization, and more. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons.

I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.