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Sydnee: Welcome to Sawbones, a medical tour of misguided medicine. I'm your cohost Justin McElroy!
Justin: And I'm Sydnee McElroy.
Sydnee: I feel like we should probably explain what's happening right now...
Justin: It's kind of complicated.
Sydnee: It's not that complicated, Syd. We got Freaky Friday'd.
Justin: I was going to go with She's the Man [laugh].
Sydnee: Nonono. She's the Man is the film based on Twelfth Night where Amanda Bynes pretends to be a boy in order to play soccer. This isn't pretend. This is fully a Freaky Friday sitch.
Justin: Basically, we've switched bodies.
Sydnee: I'm her and she's me.
Justin: We're each other. Like I said, it's complicated.
Sydnee: We talked about pretending like nothing happened and we'd just get me to read Syd's notes but I kept getting tripped up partway through a word and we figured y'all'd know what was up anyway, so-
Justin: And also
Sydnee: Oh right. Honesty is the best policy.
Justin: Exactly. That's what we're trying to teach the girls, and we should really try to lead by example.
Sydnee: [mumbled] For once.
Sydnee: Ow!
Justin: You be nice.
Sydnee: Alright, alright. Let's just get on with it okay?
Justin: Please excuse Justin. He's got menstrual cramps for the first time and he's having a rough time with it.
Sydnee: [heavy sigh] Thanks for sharing that, Syd!
Justin: Menstruation isn't anything to be embarrassed about, Justin.
Sydnee: I know that, it's just-
Justin: I know. We'll get you a heating pad and some chocolate ice cream after we finish recording.
Sydnee: Alright! Let's get this show on the road! Sooner we're done, sooner I can lie down!
Justin: [laughs] Alright. Well, do we want to start with how this situation occurred? Or...
Sydnee: Honestly? I think our audience can come up with a much better story than the truth. Let them have it. Besides, they came here for science!
Justin: Then science it is! [laughs] Well, natural science that is. This one is going to be pretty heavy on the philosophy actually.
Sydnee: Are we talking Pliny or no Pliny?
Justin: I mean, spoilers. But no Pliny.
Sydnee: Dang.
Justin: We're actually going to start off today with Plato and Aristotle.
Sydnee: Ooh. What'd those guys have to say about this? I'm betting it wasn't called Freaky Friday back then, huh?
Justin: They didn't say anything about this particular phenomenon at all, actually. What they were discussing was the nature of souls.
Sydnee: Souls?
Justin: Souls.
Sydnee: I might need that heating blanket and chocolate now if we're going to get into this kind of thing.
Justin: [laughs] They're pre-Christian, remember. And actually, they both thought that humans had three souls.
Sydnee: Three? That seems like kinda a lot.
Justin: Mhmm. The first one was a nutritive soul. This one related to growth and metabolism. They believed that humans, animals, and plants all had this one. The second one was the perceptive soul that related to pleasure, pain, and desire. They believed that humans and animals both had that one, but plants didn't.
Sydnee: I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that only humans had whatever that third soul kind was.
Justin: Correct. The third soul - possessed only by humans - was the faculty of reason.
Sydnee: [snort] Wonder what those guys'd think if they could see us today.
Justin: Well actually, they might be able to.
Sydnee: I'm sorry. What?
Justin: While metabolism and physical sensation resided in the body, reason was separate and they believed that it could continue on into a new "host," as it were.
Sydnee: You're telling me that freaking Plato believed in ghosts? And that our brains are some kind of parasite that just latches onto a new body when a baby is born?
Justin: Think of it this way. Imagine an egg-
Sydnee: No.
Justin: [laughs]
Sydnee: Our kids love that bit. They love to watch youtube animations of our stuff and apparently Sydnee likes to watch them too.
Justin: [still laughing] Anyway, if we fast forward a few centuries we get to René Descartes.
Sydnee: Oh yeah. Dude that thinks and therefore am. Is. You know what I mean.
Justin: Exactly. Cartesian dualism is the philosophical idea that the mind and the brain are two separate things. Your body on its own can't think, but your mind can exist without your body. This is where we get the idea of our immortal souls existing on a plane separate from the physical realm where we live.
Sydnee: So you mean I can blame Descartes the next time I have an existential crisis?
Justin: If you think it'd help, sure.
Sydnee: It's worth a shot. I'll let you know how it goes.
Justin: A lot of people thought Descartes idea was a good one, but a lot more thought that it was pretty wild. It spawned a lot of discussion in the philosophy of mind and body.
Sydnee: I'll bet the forum mods had a helluva time with that thread!
Justin: [laughs] Well, there were a lot of letters sent back and forth, I'll give you that. Eventually, sub-philosophies popped up and one of those is called Property dualism. This philosophy states that it's not so much that our minds and bodies reside in differing planes, but rather that the mind is created when neurobiology gets sufficiently complicated.
Sydnee: Ooh I like that one. That one feels right, in my gut.
Justin: It feels good, doesn't it? There's a certain logic to it. Less magic and more physics.
Sydnee: Yeah, yeah. So is that where we're at today? Is that the current stance of the scientific community?
Justin: Well...
Sydnee: You've got that look on your face that means you're not going to answer me just yet.
Justin: I'm not going to answer you just yet.
Sydnee: Because we need to head to-
Justin: To the billing department. Exactly.