#36: COVID, Decussation, Thymicolymphaticus | Robert Sapolsky Father-Offspring Interviews

[@yaongingyfmm1571]

No matter how bad things can seem, we can always take refuge in knowledge and keep far from the maddening world...

[@inphiniti7821]

I'm so here for some sane conversation after such a draining day. 💙 Thanks for what you guys do!

[@twistedoperator4422]

We fight on, as we must.

[@carlosandres7006]

I love this man. I could listen to him for hours

[@DR650appreciatoré]

I second this comment

[@augustwest-e8l]

Not only could I listen to him for hours ,I already have ,and will continue to do so in the future!

[@lubomirdinchev334]

I need time to process that information, can't listen for hours. Love the man tho.

[@mih9356]

Professor Sapolsky is the best ❤

[@lukaszhebda]

and Offspring Share-Sapolsky too!

[@twistedoperator4422]

I put Robert on the same level as Carl Segan. Revolutionary, kind, understanding. Everything.

[@minigrok]

yes, minus the ego. kudos to prof sapolsky.

[@kassandraclinch3688]

Thank you for this today. These videos are my quiet moments of peace when I get a break from my busy life. So grateful for Dr. Sapolsky and his radically logical view of the world. He has become a parasocial father figure and I am glad you are helping to share his great storytelling.

[@DM-nr2gt]

Dr Sapolsky is really a treasure!

[@Merkenau]

Morning coffee and new wisdom from the Sapolsky family is what I need right now. Greetings from ex east Germany, where men don't kiss like they used to.

[@riverlevity]

❤🤣👍

[@MechasCalvo]

Very kind from Rachel to remind people to care of others. Professor Sapolsky showed us with an amazing and tragic example, how some scientists can arrive to false conclusions by not selecting the appropriate controls. Thank you very much for another great episode!

[@the-mimimi]

I love these! They are so educational and so entertaining. Please keep it coming! Robert Sapolsky is highly underappreciated, he deserves a larger platform than Jordon Peterson has.

[@eugenezavorin]

Thank you for auto-translate to any languages! Stay healthy family Sapolsky!

[@ouronia1]

How does he remember everything! he is indeed a genius. I learn so much from him. Love you, Professor! with all due respect.

[@theburningsage]

Left cheek kiss, right shoulder hug. That's how I remember it from 2019. Jokes aside, I deeply appreciate you both sharing your knowledge and experience. Thank you!

[@mcd5478]

As an RN, I’m always enthralled by any and all anatomy and/or disease questions! Dr. S does such fabulous job of explaining that it’s all so easily remembered. What gift to be taught by this generous genius of a man.🌟⭐️🌟

[@riverlevity]

👍💯💥

[@kellyberry4173]

Thank you Robert...and offspring of course! Its refreshing to hear you speak on longcovid. 2020 I thought it was bronchitis. This was before vaccines. My wonderful husband of 41years is helping me with it. But it is challenging. I must write everything down now. Or it will be completely forgotten the next morning....almost like starting dementia. No taste, no smell. Going on 5 years now. Haven't had much luck with Drs. I have no thyroid, so thats taken care of by a endocrinologist, for my synthroid meds...But hes not interested AT ALL. My other Dr. is my eye doctor for my glaucoma...and he couldnt care less. So, doing the best I can. Thank you so much for sharing what you think about it! I do so appreciate you and yr beautiful daughter!!! Well done!!!

[@francoisperrin7397]

Have you consulted an ENT doctor? They have been the ones publishing the most on SARS-COV-2 and covid-19. They would probably help you with your anosmia and ageusia. Long covid-19 needs medical research. It is an unknown brain disease so be patient, recovery if any, would take time.

[@kellyberry4173]

​@@francoisperrin7397Thank you!

[@CandorAspieMD]

Stanford University wouldn't have the reputation it has without Robert Sapolsky.

[@MTVBrat]

But ... Linda Moulton Howe 🤭🤭 can you say, "Damage control?" Elizabeth Wakefield herself would run into the well-lit and crowded neighbourhood, grabbing people in the street to scream, "have you heard this?!"

[@MTVBrat]

Sweet Valley team would investigate this nonsense in a thriller edition... *Grumble* 😖

[@MTVBrat]

This wouldn't even happen in Connecticut #sayhellotoyourfriends

[@MTVBrat]

Fear Street, maybe. Ok, this is a Goosebumps edition/ episode.

[@MTVBrat]

Like The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, where those kids move to Florida because their parents are professors on a grant to study wildlife. Eek!!

[@oonaandsarahandbree]

I think this is my favorite video of the series. The two stories about how we have “gotten it backwards” in scientific explanation are especially pertinent as we muddle through the pandemic and try to understand and treat long covid. A 4th (or overall) lesson could be that science and medicine need cultivate humility, and consider there is always a possibility we may be getting it backwards.

[@andrewbaker8373]

Of my own free will I feel so much better hearing this video. Thank you both

[@petenicholls5266]

Marvelous...as always! As an aside, if I have tea in one hand and a sandwich on a plate in the other...I can just about turn off the wall light with my chin...that is evolutionary adaptation!! 😉

[@kassandraclinch3688]

Thank you for this today. These videos are my quiet moments of peace when I get a break from my busy life. So grateful for Dr. Sapolsky and his radically logical view of the world. He has become a parasocial father figure and I am glad you are helping to share his great storytelling. I hug on the right side. I’m left handed so I confuse people by hugging and hand shaking backwards.

[@minigrok]

status thymicolymphaticus: what a storyteller this man is. I am delighted, thanks.

[@joegithler]

Spandrel! I couldn't remember this word. I tried to Google it and only got vestigial. I even watched some old episodes. Thank you🎉

[@gabrielponscortes]

What a great storyteller.

[@hammersaw3135]

I found this conversation hilarious at times, especially the bit about how we don't know why we have chins.

[@jimoffutt9156]

I laughed hard at the adaptations for picking bread crumbs in the corner

[@hammersaw3135]

@jimoffutt9156 relatable lol, I'd stop on a dime 2 pick up a nickle

[@jeremymr]

Man, I really picked the right year to dive deep into the free will topic and realize it's an incoherent concept. If I believed tens of millions of Americans freely chose to elect Trump for a second time after all that's happened I would be even more disturbed and upset than I am now! A lot of my friends are so confused and baffled, saying stuff like, "How is this possible?" and it's very tempting for me to be like... "So everything we are and do is a result of luck and even who we end up voting for comes down to bajillions of factors out of our control that made us convinced to support a certain candidate and not another one at the moment of voting. Trump voters could not have done otherwise in the circumstance they were in and we don't have a shred of free will." I feel like people knowing this truth about no free will would be good for them, but it's very hard to convey it without spending a lot of time explaining why lack of free will doesn't entail nihilism and why we would actually be better off without belief in free will and so on. I think as important as the arguments against free will it's important to make people understand why they shouldn't get super depressed or have an existential crisis over it.

[@theburningsage]

Nothing wrong with optimistic nihilism. Human existence is a spandrel. 😂 end of Decussation

[@inphiniti7821]

Yes!!! This has saved my sanity in a serious way. I'm so thankful to have this insight.

[@Furyan5theLoneWolf]

Not everyone has the E.Q. to handle the knowledge that we don't have free will. Don't force it.

[@poi4ever121]

Right hugger always. Hugs are my therapy.😊😊 This is utterly fascinating!! You are The Best. I thought your book, which I own and will re-read, "Behave" is very good. Your humor and goodwill is equal to your scholarship.

[@bradsillasen1972]

Fascinating as always! :)

[@merlynn1370]

Thanks for doing these. I learn so much.

[@curiousreporter4292]

Good morning sir Sapolsky Shahid from India

[@jennymhumble]

I'm adding this info to your poll! 😊 I noticed when I hug someone, I go towards their right shoulder, so right cheek to right cheek.

[@ms.communication8464]

Fascinating! Thank you so much!

[@seangambogi7901]

Robert has a channel!! Awesome

[@AMDELLIS]

Thank you. 3 years into cardiac damage from COVID. I still mask.

[@lizlemon9632]

Brilliant mini scientific lessons. Thank you for sharing your brain.

[@KeithCooper-Albuquerque]

Fascinating episode! Keep them coming!

[@OzGoober]

Amazing story! Thank you.

[@michaelsee6553]

Thank you again... as always you give me much to think about and I always learn something.

[@wordsmith1953]

On status thymicolymphaticus: The horrible history continues. Senior citizens, like me (71), are still having cancers diagnosed in the area of the neck and mouth, presumed to be the result of having their thymus gland irradiated in infancy, like me in 1953. They're reporting alarming incidences of cancer of the esophagus, throat, salivary glands, jaw, gums, and elsewhere, on the Cancer Survivors Network online forum. The most healthy part of me, these days, is my skepticism of the medical profession. Thank you for addressing this tragically misguided medical procedure, which continues to yield devastating outcomes.

[@JohnGlen502]

Long Covid for me was like living with a strobe light on for months. Stuttering, brain fog, wandering consciousness, exhaustion, and incredible weight loss and weakness. Low insulin was finally diagnosed but that recently increased along with weight. Doctors know nothing!

[@noone-t7b]

Divided, polarised you could say the mystical experience that ensues. Thankfully I don't live in an inner city area but the Stanford schizophrenia lecture is my favourite. Very enjoyable in a mixed way, thankyou.

[@DriveByDoGooders]

Crazy coincidence because I just watched an episode from 1965's Alfred Hitchcock Hour that actually talks about this. So relevant even now! The episode is about selling corpses to medical students and how that happened. And the corruption within! Love it. Season 3, episode 7 entitled "The McGregor Affair" mixes poverty, science, greed all into getting dead flesh to fiddle with... Wildy relevant from so long ago.

[@cherylmillard2067]

I have never had Covid, I have been vaccinated and luckily I'm a bit of a hermit.

[@judykappeler6963]

At the end Sapolsky comments: But for me, the biggest take-home lesson sort of comes from out of this, and it's a more general one having to do with any realm in which we are making judgments, which is: “Be sure, be really damn sure you know what you're talking about when you've decided you know what counts as normal, because the second you've done that, you have forever after distorted your capacity to look at any exception to that and see it objectively.”

[@MrJerryStevenson]

Right side! Also still sober and still a determinist that takes accountability!! lol

[@stevenlaube7535]

divergence go on its all very interesting what were your first memory's ? how did that make you feel ?

[@NancyLebovitz]

Do snakes decassate? Legless lizards? Do thymuses which which have been shrunken by stress recover, or do they stay shrunken?

[@dacisky]

As you know,other viral infections can cause long manifestations. At the age of 14 one of my cousins got an unknown virus and developed pots.She's 20 and still has it. This Feb I got a virus not covered by the vaccinations I took and my short term memory is now altered. In about 2002,I got food poisoning and now have irritable bowel syndrome which I control with hflc...Anyway,this stuff is bloody creepy and disturbing. A talk on how infections can cause these and other problems would be really interesting. I'm in the USA. Also,why when learning a musical instrument and each hand has to do 2 different things is it difficult and there is sometimes a strange sensation with this but goes away as you progress. Hug from the left cause I'm left handed.

[@nancychace8619]

Certainly the effects of long covid have to be every bit as varied as those of an initial infection, depending on the individual. Three months? Try 4 years. As to its cause, I'll go with persistent virus that doesn't altogether go away, chronic inflammation and maybe some autiimmune response - maybe.

[@Alex-js5lg]

I'm betting it's multiple pathologies contributing to long covid. If the inflammation response isn't strong enough, the virus may persist in various tissues. If it's too strong, it causes damage to varying degrees of repairability. I just hope there won't be a shingles equivalent the way there is with chicken pox: where the virus re-emerges decades after infection.

[@nancychace8619]

@Alex-js5lg Yikes! Me, too.

[@Horibonda]

My new priest

[@timmccully3605]

Good Monday to science and ,"The Beard"! From Newfoundland. Have read Zebras, Behave and Determined. Entire new world to me now. Thank you for freeing me and showing me I am not alone! Much love to you all. I wonder if, Doc; have you ever studied Trevor Greene. The Canadian soldier who was axed in the head. Wonder what your thoughts are on his injury. Faithfully yours , Tim

[@NihilisticRealism]

the game Bloodborne is about the horrors of early medical anatomy and taught me 100% of the things you said on that check out the series by charredthermos

[@jonanon8193]

Any comments on the health concerns of mRNA COVID vaccines?

[@mozartsbumbumsrus7750]

Yep, as always, check out "Debunk the Funk" with Dr. Wilson, who took RFK lies apart in great detail!

[@bh8281]

'preciate yah

[@serengetilion]

My question is concerning genes, dominant and recessive. So how do genes become dominate over the recessive ones? Is/was it determined because of "a battle" between the two? Or am I thinking about this the wrong way? On a side note, love what y'all are doing here! Anything, anything, Robert Salpolsky has to say about all he talks about, I want to hear it, all.

[@freyc1]

If you want your question answered, you should ask it via the link in the description of the video (if you haven't already done so). It's an enormously complicated story, though, and I think much remains to be understood. It has a lot to do with gene regulation (if their is a "battle", it's in the course of evolution).

[@Alex-js5lg]

If it's a survival advantage to have interhemispherical integration (I don't know whether it is or not) and efficient signaling between the brain and the body (which presumably _is_ advantageous), could decussation be a result of evolutionary pressures related to processing time? Do the structures of the brain that require the fastest processing sit near the corpus callosum? Does the fact that the pathways have to cross the median of the body contribute towards physical symmetry, coordination, and balance?

[@goosergone143]

What does living under a dictatorship versus living in a free society do to the brain? I wonder

[@mih9356]

I assume you think America is a free society which is not. So, what does it do to the brain when you live in a country with the illusion that it is free and have 1000 military bases around the world to fund almost all the wars and become numb after watching wars live everyday with a spice of fake narrow minded political comments on CNN and similar channels ? 😅

[@nancychace8619]

Shrinks it.

[@nancychace8619]

Goosergone - Shrinks it.

[@CR-rm4iy]

unsure but it definitely changes the "average" person, as certain personality types are prone to disappearing in dictatorships and hence not having offspring or having that offspring abroad.

[@jeffwhited287]

I believe we Americans are about to become the guinea pigs in that experiment.

[@Vahamedus]

Hey I think it was Brezhnev hehe. But anyways, a funny paper.

[@bobdillaber1195]

A suggestion: the word "decosation" is new to me. Maybe to others? Could you say words that might be unfamiliar and then spell them?

[@Fungiculturalist]

the youtuber Physics Girl got a terrible case of long covid. really scary

[@CluelessClutz]

Does anyone know if there are other “invented imaginary illnesses” like status thymicolympathicus which are the result of “bad” scientific practice (in the modern age)?

[@cht2162]

Question: With Robert Kennedy as Health Czar, will he stop all vaccines (including COVID shots?

[@martincattell6820]

Wow! So decussation makes it easier to kiss East German dictators. Thanks Dr. Sapolsky!

[@sparXKuijper]

I go to their left shoulder so , I lean to my right. (Hug Approach)

[@noone-t7b]

The cold war is a spandrel, the most obvious example, peopl 21:34 e talk of it in terms of what you don't like, social darwinism running away with itself. So there is a requirement for a core subject, "human social organisation", you're the specialist in baboons. The ancient brain hasn't changed much the cortex jumped on top, they operate together to maintain the highest relative population possible, and come into conflict, hence the cold war. Only people like you could write that subject, you could say that's why you exist, you and your peers adaptation. This is that question of deities, which ones a person likes nest.

[@allisonwashington6816]

French here: right cheek kiss

[@MTVBrat]

I've been on the welfare for over a decade and, despite over 15 attempts to receive professional help this year alone, I lost count, being told verbatim that my problems are psychosocial and there's no help for people like me, I'm now somewhat relieved that Q3 will at least be able to help/motivate one of my children to escape our socio-economic position. Should I wait until they turn 8, or double-digits, do ya reckon? 😂 😂😂 🤯

[@Oneiric_Benevolence]

@@MTVBrat May you be well brother

[@singing-sands]

right cheek first kisser...just because!

[@brainimager]

I still have trouble remembering which tract decussates at which level. Clearly Mother Nature was out to mess with medical students :)

[@davidwilkie9551]

Just guessing from semantic origin, "mathematically, normal has to mean upright, vertical and at right angles to a plain surface ", because it's "normal usage", but it may be a personal choice.. Eg Dr Sapolsky's chin is normal because he has very upright respected qualifications proven to the peerage, and you notice his daughter is perfectly normal.

[@gbizzotto]

maybe in this day and age being chronically stressed is the norm

[@RafaelPolidoroBio]

Brazilians hug and kiss right to right

[@reygranado1229]

👽👍

[@Little-bird-told-me]

Please improve video quality. Also terrible is very high imho.

[@seanwelch71]

I have a question. Do Baboons ever birth social rebels ?

[@InigoMontoya-]

They are all social rebels; none of them wear pants.

[@iansowden8049]

I looked up "burking". Roberts source is correct but tha concensus is that it means suffocation as quietly as possible. Which is what Burk did to his victims. (He had a rooming house and the story is much more complicated) ANYWAY the word also came to mean to quieten or suppress. It could be reintroduced now for similar political efforts by left and right and many social groups. E.g. I have just been burked or they are burking. Also a Burk in the UK is an idiot (it's usage is dropping) so it could be a Burk who burked me. SORRY world I got a bit carried away.

[@A3Kr0n]

My question is who making 450,000 peer reviewed studies on covid? That seems excessive.

[@patikrysiuk6683]

people looking for grants

[@mozartsbumbumsrus7750]

Dr. Wilson at "Debunk the Funk" gives all the scientific evidence sources and honesty.

[@MTVBrat]

I don't know why people seem to complain about their world today. Let's look at the silver lining. It's Halloween Night! Every Single. Day. 🥳

[@RafaelPolidoroBio]

Evolutionary adaptation is precluded by variability. If all limbed animals have decussait, there's nothing to discuss. It rather happened and it was cost effective.

[@pansepot1490]

I guess it’s like chirality.

[@milkjug7800]

First?

[@A3Kr0n]

Looks like you're a winner

[@pamelabarone5868]

Parasitic?

[@danielhopkins296]

Its misleading to claim such a " number of people have died" without citing your source and mention their condition first.