Today's episode is one of my all-time favorites.

Steven Dubner also loved it so much so that he asked if he could use it as an episode

of Freakonomics Radio where it aired last December.

Today, though for the first time, this episode is back where it belongs, and it's right

for home here at People I Mostly Admire.

If there's one topic that nobody wants to talk about, it's death.

So it tells you something that my guest today, BJ Miller, has a TED talk on dying that has

garnered nearly 15 million views.

Simply put, BJ thinks that our society's approach to dying is completely wrong, and he's

on a crusade to change the way we die.

He's a physician who's seen over and over how our medical system fails people at the end

of life.

If you care about the quality of your own death or the death of your loved ones, you

owe it to yourself to hear what BJ has to say.

We're sacrificing anything we might resemble a quality of life for this potential for

a few more minutes on the planet, and that's a tricky bargain.

Welcome to People I Mostly Admire, with Steve Levitt.

BJ Miller is a palliative care physician who's worked at the University of California, San

Francisco's Cancer Center.

He's taught at the medical there, and he's worked with the San hospice project in San Francisco.

He knows he's patients through an organization he started to help provide support and guidance

to the terminal ill.

...