Shortcast

We care a lot about reach, because the best conversation means nothing if no one finds it. With that in mind, I want to open a sensitive, perspective-shifting topic. You met Robin in 2016, lost him in 2021, and now you say—after years of work—you can communicate with him. I’m going to ask the questions listeners would ask and push for rigor, while holding space for the grief at the heart of this.

He was given two weeks and lived a little longer, passing just before our fourth anniversary. I was shattered, even as a neuroscientist and psychiatrist. I saw robins constantly, then had a powerful night-time encounter that felt like he was forcing himself through syrup to be seen. Mediums didn’t help. I decided if this was possible, I had to learn it myself—and I’m certain I did.

Where did your investigation truly begin, and how did you frame it as science rather than wishful thinking?

It felt like learning a new language across two worlds. I looked for evidence that mind can exist beyond the body. The moment he died, I knew his essence wasn’t in that bed. From there I explored whether our perception is wider than we realize, including what I now count as thirty-four senses.

Are those expanded senses only for contacting the dead, or can they help us connect better with the living too?

It starts with yourself. Many senses operate outside awareness, but practices like breathwork can shift internal states. Grief also lives in the body. On the date I once brought him home to die, my body flared with pain for weeks before I consciously remembered. Talk alone couldn’t reach it; I needed somatic work like massage, movement, and craniosacral therapy. Trauma can mute speech circuits, so the body must help release what words cannot. I also woke freezing in those first weeks—he hated the cold and his body was in refrigeration—so my sense of temperature felt strangely attuned. Over time I asked for exact signs and received them, and I experienced thought insertion, which I recognized clinically yet could track with self-awareness. Grief can mimic psychosis; that realization gave me compassion and tools.

Do we train this like we train a muscle, and does disbelief block access?

Yes, it’s like the gym and like learning a language—for both sides. Many people quietly believe but fear ridicule.

I value open-mindedness, but I need guardrails. Without rigor, I’ll believe anything.

I agree on rigor. I asked, what if? Human life shares birth, living, and dying. We’ve forgotten how nature cycles renewal. Look at slime mold collaborating under threat, or mycelial networks feeding trees for centuries. Ideas once dismissed now stand on firm ground. As a cognitive scientist, I’m not asking blind belief—I’m asking why this conversation is taboo when connection and relief could help us.

When did you decide to write The Science, and what did daily communication actually look like?

I wasn’t planning a book. I reached a place where sharing felt useful. Day to day, I ask questions in my mind and receive answers that don’t feel like my own, but the strongest moments are signs. For the second anniversary, I asked for a phoenix—rare enough to avoid false hits. I kept passing a huge Phoenix Garden sign in Chinatown, then, on the day itself, my only route from the Navajo Nation took me through Phoenix, Arizona. That timing mattered to me.

How do you separate this from confirmation bias, like noticing your new car everywhere?

I narrow criteria and add timing. It might be a word or symbol that must appear three times by a set hour, ideally in places I wouldn’t normally go. Once, after an upsetting detour past the hospital where he was treated, I asked for reassurance and minutes later saw an elastic band shaped like the infinity symbol on the pavement. Mechanistically, the brain’s reticular activating system filters what we notice. I call it the art of noticing. Research on shared trait vulnerability shows creativity overlaps with mental illness through hyperconnectivity, novelty salience, and a looser perceptual filter. With high working memory and flexible thinking, those traits can expand awareness instead of causing collapse. That lens led me to study near-death experiences, terminal lucidity, and dark retreats.

Terminal lucidity shows people with severe brain damage becoming vividly themselves within hours of death—conventional models can’t explain how shattered hardware suddenly runs complex software. Near-death research spans thousands of cases. An orthopedic surgeon described being underwater far beyond survivable limits yet reporting coherent experiences. A neurosurgeon who once dismissed such things wrote about his own coma journey. And one ICU patient saw his primary nurse during a cardiac arrest, was told to return, and to apologize to her parents about a red MG—she had died in a crash that weekend, which he didn’t know. The volume and precision of these reports demand we look again at mind and brain.

So what do you now believe about mind and body, especially in light of cases like an Alzheimer’s patient becoming clear and present just before passing?

Chemical surges might play a role, but that doesn’t explain coherent memory and personality returning when tissue is severely compromised. A plausible view is that mind isn’t produced by matter alone. At the edge of life and death, we may glimpse a truth that’s always present—that mind can operate independently of brain.

Where is Robin now, in your view? If soul and body are distinct, where does that leave us?

Call it consciousness, collective mind, or something larger—our essence returns to and persists within it. Perhaps it reincarnates, perhaps it doesn’t, but it doesn’t vanish. I know this personally, and while I can’t prove it in a lab, I can argue it hasn’t been disproven. Some scientists compare the brain to a receiver; others contend consciousness underlies reality rather than spacetime. A good scientist stays curious. I think we should, because the cost of ignoring this is disconnection, and the upside is meaning, relief, and a deeper bond with life.

That was a most-replayed moment from a previous episode. For the full conversation, check the link in the description. And remember, distribution still decides who gets heard—whatever you make, make sure people can find it.