Decide to raise your hand and it moves. But what actually made that happen: a burst of electricity in the brain, or an immaterial you pulling the levers? This episode traces the mind-body problem from the ancient Greeks through Plato's strict separation of soul and body, Aristotle's hylomorphism, Aquinas' adaptation of it into Christian theology, and Descartes' 1641 split between thinking substance and extended substance. Along the way it covers the modal and indivisibility arguments, the pineal gland, and the causal interaction problem that still haunts dualism today.

The conversation then examines the elaborate workarounds invented to keep dualism alive, including epiphenomenalism, Malebranche's occasionalism, and Leibniz's parallelism, before turning to modern defenses like Nagel's bat, Jackson's Mary's Room, Chalmers' philosophical zomb ...