Dr. Tara Swart: A neuroscientist and medical doctor who trained as a psychiatrist, and a best-selling author (The Source). She was The Diary Of A CEO's most-viewed guest, and returns to discuss her new book The Signs.
What this episode covers
Tara Swart reveals the secret she kept during her last appearance: the loss of her husband Robin to leukemia in 2021 and her resulting belief that the dead can communicate with the living. She argues humans have far more than five senses (she counts 34) and that the mind may exist independently of the body, citing near-death experiences and terminal lucidity. Steven Bartlett plays devil's advocate, pressing her on confirmation bias and whether altered states are merely neurochemical. Swart also covers practical neuroscience: the gut-brain axis, trauma stored in the body, somatic healing, and 'the art of noticing.' The episode closes with her raw account of Robin's final weeks and her thoughts on grief and love.
The guest's own work
The Signs
Dr. Tara Swart
“That's the start of my journey that I've written about in signs. And do you think you found the answer?”— Tara Swart
The Source
Dr. Tara Swart
“a lot of new research has come up since I wrote the source. So, it's actually you know, we know a lot about this bi-directional communication”— Tara Swart
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Proof of Heaven
Dr. Eben Alexander
“Dr. Eben Alexander, who wrote Proof of Heaven. He is a doctor. He was an atheist. He was in a coma with bacterial meningitis”— Tara Swart
Threshold
Alexander Batthyany
“Professor Alexander Batthyany who wrote Threshold about terminal lucidity put it really nicely when he said”— Tara Swart
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk
“a lot of people have heard of Bessel van der Kolk's work and the book The Body Keeps the Score. And it makes sense kind of intuitively”— Tara Swart
Surviving Death
Netflix
“Dr. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon, she's in that Netflix documentary Surviving Death. She was submerged underwater for 15 or 20 minutes.”— Tara Swart
Big reveals from this episode
- Claims she is 100% sure it is possible to communicate with someone who has passed away.
- Reveals she kept a secret for four years and questioned whether she herself was psychotic or manic.
- Discloses her husband Robin died of leukemia in 2021, two days before their fourth wedding anniversary.
- Describes seeing a hazy apparition of Robin beside her bed weeks after his death.
- Recounts the 'red MG' near-death-experience case from Dr. Bruce Greyson as key evidence.
- Steven announces he invested millions and became co-owner of Ketone-IQ.
- Emotional account of rushing to the hospital and Robin saying he kept wishing to see her face one more time.
- Steven admits the show has pushed him from skeptic toward an agnostic, never-fixed position.
Worth remembering
- A literature review suggests humans may have 34 senses, not five.
- Her body relapsed into physical pain on the exact date she'd taken Robin home to die, before she consciously recalled it.
- Terminal lucidity: dying patients with irreversibly damaged brains can suddenly become fully lucid hours before death.
- Dr. Bruce Greyson has over 5,000 recorded near-death-experience cases; globally over 10,000 are documented.
- Intuition is called 'gut instinct' because Hebbian learning pushes patterns down into gut neurons.
- The brain and gut communicate mainly via the vagus nerve, Latin for 'wandering.'
- In multi-day dark retreats people begin hallucinating light, then animals, then deities, emulating a near-death experience.
- Nurse Joy Milne smelled her husband's Parkinson's years before diagnosis, leading to a new swab test.
- Russell Foster was ridiculed for proposing melanopsin retinal cells that sense light for circadian rhythm, later proven.