So, Nikki, can I call you a vampire?

I mean, since we're friends.

Nikki Twilly is a reporter over at The New Yorker.

She also hosts a podcast called Gastropod.

So it makes sense that she likes to

taste things, including blood, sort of. You've actually tasted synthetic blood?

Yes, I have chugged a shot of synthetic blood. I don't think you can call me a real vampire,

only a fake vampire,

which is a synthetic vampire, if you will. Still a vampire. Still a vampire, but an artificial one.

Nikki says this shot glass full of so-called blood looked like a raspberry smoothie, but had a salty tang and a fatty finish.

She drank it in a lab that is racing to create a replacement for the actual human blood

that gets extracted and infused right now.

The Department of Defense has funded these scientists to the tune of $46 million.

And their reason is simple.

Actual human blood could save a lot of lives, but it's got downsides.

First, there isn't enough of it.

But also, blood is alive, and so it takes very special conditions to keep it alive and parts of blood, the platelets in blood,

they have to be constantly agitated, like jiggled all the time to stay alive.

So it's really kind of tough to supply blood.

You have to type it.

So we all know that we have blood types and you can't put certain, you know, you can't just give anyone anyone's blood without knowing their blood type. That's a hold up.

Do you have this estimate in your piece that I think if a NATO country went to war with Russia, folks think that they'd run out of blood in one day?

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