Practical Advice for the End of Life: A Podcast with BJ Miller
episode
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
44 min
4 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 5 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Who is BJ Miller and why is he considered a celebrity in hospice and palliative care?
Welcome to the Jerry Pal podcast. This is Eric Widera. This is Alex Smith. And Alex, we got a full room today. We got a full room
here. Pretty excited too. I'm psyched. Who
is
our guest? Our guest is BJ. Hey. BJ.
Who needs no other introduction
other
than
our guest is BJ. It's like Prince. It's like Prince. Just the BJ. Welcome to the Jerry Pal podcast,
BJ. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Eric. Um, and there's somebody else in the room,
somebody else in the room and Kelly, who's a frequent guest host on the Jerry Pell podcast, social worker with the palliative care service. Welcome back.
Thank you. Hard act to follow after that introduction
for
BJ.
Do you want to give a little intro who this BJ? Okay. So
BJ, just to give a little bit more, is a palliative care physician, rock star, rock star, superstar. Ted Talk's been viewed over 9 million times. 9
million. That's getting close to what this Jerry Pal podcast will be at. I think we
may
have
had like 200 on one of our YouTube videos. That's pretty good. 9 million. And is a frequent public speaker and has worked in hospice and palliative care in the Bay Area and elsewhere. So it's terrific to have you with us, BJ.
Thanks, man. Good to see you guys.
We're going to start off with a song request, right?
Yeah. Do you have a song for Alex to sing?
Yes. Tonight you belong to me, Alex.
And you're going to join me in this. I'm going to try. Perfect.
I know you belong to somebody new. But tonight... You belong to me. Although we're apart,
you're a
part
of my
heart. But tonight, you belong to me.
That song sounds really familiar. Where have I heard it before? I
don't know.
The Jerk.
Steve Martin. That's right. And
Bernadette Peters. Well done. I got to rewatch that. Why did you pick that song?
Because it's such a sweet little jingle and goes well with the ukulele and I wanted to hear Alex. I wanted to be serenaded by Alex.
That was terrific harmony. Thank
you. I'm looking forward to the end of this podcast. We can hear a little more of that. A
little bit more at the end.
So BJ, you just published a huge book. It's a pretty big book. It's thick. But it's huge. It's getting a lot of press.
What motivated BJ and Shoshana Berger to write *A Beginner's Guide to the End*?
I saw you on CNN
the
other day. The book's title, A Beginner's Guide to the End, Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death. That's
the one. Wow. Yeah. Well done. Thank God. It's been almost four years project.
Why? This is like, whenever we have somebody here who writes a book and comes onto a podcast, I always think like, why, why, why did you put
yourself through that? Cause it sounds like a
really
arduous process. It's a little brutal. I mean, it's wonderful and horrible and everything, you know, um, I mean, the impulse was because like we all know, especially clinically, you see there becomes pattern recognition. You start to see themes. And yes, dying is individual and personal. Absolutely. But there are themes. And more to the point is you see a lot of people suffering at the end of life totally unnecessarily because they haven't prepared, because they haven't planned, and because the system has become pretty unintuitive.
Yeah.
If you just leave death to chance, well, that used to be fine when you would more likely drop dead of a heart attack in the middle of playing tennis. But nowadays, you're going to fade out from long bouts of chronic illness. And that takes some preparation. So the idea of like basically the impulse of the book was like harm reduction. Like you see people where death is way harder than it needs to be. So the book was an effort to kind of get a lot of information in one place so people – had less of an excuse to ignore the subject.
You know, when I was reading your book, the one line that stood out to me as far as the intro was that you wrote this book to help dying something we can get to know a little better. Is that a good summary
too? Well, on some level, okay. So on some level, a lot of the preparation, like I say, is harm reduction. Like you do these things to make things less hard, less crappy on some level. But like we all know in this work, There's also a piece of dealing with things in such a way that life becomes more amazing and more wonderful.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is BJ Miller and why is he considered a celebrity in hospice and palliative care?
0:00–2:51
2
What motivated BJ and Shoshana Berger to write *A Beginner's Guide to the End*?
2:51–6:36
3
How does the book address practical tasks like cleaning out a home or posting about illness on social media?
6:36–10:55
4
Why is the “Can I afford to die?” chapter considered one of the hardest to write?
10:55–15:51
5
What insights does the book offer about sexuality, love, and intimacy at the end of life?
15:51–20:02
6
How should clinicians phrase code‑status conversations to empower patients?
20:02–25:48
7
What role do illustrations play in making the book both comforting and thought‑provoking?
25:48–31:23
8
How can patients, families, and clinicians work together to change a broken end‑of‑life system?
31:23–44:33
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
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