The Nature of Suffering: BJ Miller and Naomi Saks
episode
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
52 min
4 speakers
5 chapters
transcribed 9 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the purpose of this episode and who are the guests?
This podcast is CME eligible. To learn more and claim credit, go to the CME tab on the Jerry Pal website. And Alex, there's something else special coming up.
Our 300th anniversary episode is coming up. 300 podcasts. Can you believe it? We've done many songs. We have many laughs, many tears. I don't know about tears. Anyway, we would love to have your questions. What are we doing for our 300th podcast,
Eric? We're doing an AMA, Ask Me Anything. So you send us questions, we will answer any and all of them as much as we can get to on the 300th episode podcast.
You could ask us questions about studies that we've talked about, about fields, about our opinions about topics. We have many guests on. You don't get to hear from us as much. You
could ask us... What were our most memorable podcasts?
Yeah. What it takes to be a podcaster and why we do this.
Or anything else that comes to your mind, just send the answer. The questions, we will do the answers on the AMA podcast. So send it to eric.wadera at ucsf.edu. That's eric.wadera at ucsf.edu. Welcome to the Jerry Pal podcast. This is Eric Guadera. This is Alex Smith. And Alex, who do we have with us today?
We're delighted to welcome back BJ Miller, who's a palliative care doctor and co-founder of Metal Health. We'll have a link to that website for Metal Health in the show notes associated with this podcast. BJ, welcome back to Jerry Pal.
Thank you, Alex. Good to see you. Thank you, Eric. Great to be with you guys.
And we also have Naomi Sachs, who's a palliative care chaplain and assistant professor at UCSF. Naomi, welcome to the Jerry Pal podcast.
Thank you. Great to be here.
Every once in a while, we try to go over a very, very challenging subject on the Jerry Pal podcast. I can think of no more challenging subject than the nature of suffering. That's what we're going to be talking about today. We're hoping for a quick answer of what it is. So this should be like a 30 second podcast. But before we jump into that, Naomi, I think you have a song request for Alex.
Yes, I do. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M.
And Naomi, why did you choose this?
Well, it was one of five, but honestly, Alex chose it because he's tried it in 2017 and he wanted another crack at it.
That's right. Well, what was your number one? Did you have a number
one? It was in there. It was in there. My
top five. It was in there. All right. So it was your choice. He just picked one of the five. Yeah. Okay.
So I still, I was hoping to be able to play this on guitar live, but I still have a broken hand. So I'm going to play it on this keyboard I got yesterday. And for those of you listening on the podcast, not watching on YouTube, my son Kai's playing guitar on that one. All right, here we go.
And Alex's office will slowly be taken up by musical equipment. That's correct. Mixers, podcasting equipment.
Wait, you both have sons named Kai?
Yes, we do. Mine is actually named after Kai Rizdahl because every day I pick up my wife at 6pm when Kai Rizdahl was on NPR. That's such a written story, by the way. Naming your kid after an NPR
host. A lot of Kai is easy. My Kai is named Kai Kealana after my dad. It's a Hawaiian version of his name, Blake. Here's a little bit of Everybody Hurts.
When the day is long And the night The night is yours alone When you're sure you've had enough Of this life Hang on Don't let yourself go Cause everybody cries And everybody hurts Sometimes
That's fun. Naomi, I'm going to turn to you first because we were actually chatting at a different, we were doing a Vital Talk thing with fellows and we were chatting about potential Jerry Pal podcasts and you mentioned doing one on suffering. Can I ask you, what made you think about that?
Yeah. And thanks so much for picking up on it. There's so many of these big words about the experience of human existence that we kind of talk about, especially in palliative care and geriatrics. And we never have this like really nice, intimate time to unpack them. And we also assume that we all are saying the same thing. And the other thing is, I think a lot about suffering.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the purpose of this episode and who are the guests?
0:00–8:21
2
How does the song “Everybody Hurts” set the tone for the discussion on suffering?
8:21–21:28
3
What definitions of suffering do BJ Miller and Naomi Saks offer?
21:28–32:25
4
How does BJ Miller describe suffering as a “wedge” and what are the two response pathways?
32:25–46:54
5
How does Naomi Saks view suffering from a spiritual and existential perspective?
46:54–52:24
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
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