Practical Advice for the End of Life: A Podcast with BJ Miller

This week we talk with BJ Miller, hospice and palliative care physician, public speaker, and now author with Shoshana Berger of the book "A Beginner's Guide to the End." As we note on the podcast, BJ is about as close as we get to a celebrity in Hospice and Palliative Care. His TED Talk "What Really Matters at the End of Life" has been viewed more than 9 million times. As we discuss on the Podcast, this has changed BJ's life, and he spends most of his working time engaged in public speaking, being the public "face" of the hospice and palliative care movement. The book he and Berger wrote is filled to the brim with practical advice. I mean, nuts and bolts practical advice. Things like: - How to clean out not only your emotional house but your physical house (turns out there are services for that!) - Posting about your illness on social media (should you post to Facebook) - What is the difference between a funeral home and mortuary - Can I afford to die? How much will it cost? We focus our discussion with BJ on his reasons for writing the book, sexuality and serious illness, and priming people to check the instincts of a medical system that favors aggressive/intensive/invasive care and crappy deaths. And BJ came up with some nice harmonies to "Tonight, You Belong to Me." Enjoy! AlexSmithMD