Super Soul Special: Dr. BJ Miller: How to Die

Oprah's Super Soul

Oprah

Society & Culture

4.6 • 32.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Original Air Date: November 12th, 2018 Dr. BJ Miller is a hospice and palliative care specialist who treats patients with life-altering and terminal illnesses at the University of California in San Francisco. Dr. Miller shares his revelations about a subject that is often taboo in our culture: the experience of death. He describes the moment after a person's death and explains why it is both sacred and unknowable. While a sophomore in college, Dr. Miller suffered a devastating electrical shock throughout his body. He lost half his arm and both his legs below the knee. He talks about how this earth-shattering experience proved to be a spiritual wake-up call and how it left him with an extraordinary sense of what it means to confront death. Dr. Miller discusses why he thinks it’s time for us to rethink the idea that “death is inherently horrible.” He also reveals what he's learned about regret by experiencing “vicarious deathbed moments” in his practice. Dr. Miller’s book is titled “A Beginner’s Guide to the End.” Want more podcasts from OWN? Visit https://bit.ly/OWNPods You can also watch Oprah’s Super Soul, The Oprah Winfrey Show and more of your favorite OWN shows on your TV! Visit https://bit.ly/find_OWN

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe
0:07.2	that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be
0:13.8	more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the
0:19.8	deeper world around us starts right now. Today we ask palliative care physician
0:27.3	and former senior director of the groundbreaking Zen hospice project, B.J. Miller. What
0:32.9	really matters when we die? After witnessing the moment of transition hundreds of
0:39.6	times, Dr. B.J. Miller has come to view life and death as mutually inseparable. He also
0:47.4	has the unique perspective of facing mortality as both a doctor and a patient after
0:54.2	a freak accident caused him to lose three of his limbs when he was a college student.
0:58.6	B.J. Miller is passionate in this belief. It's time for all of us to rethink, redesign,
1:05.8	and reimagine everything we've been taught about death.
1:09.6	So let's start when you say your relationship with death began. That was 19 years old, right?
1:18.5	You did a crazy thing. Yep. Yep. When you lost your lower legs in arm. Tell me what was
1:23.6	going on that night. Have you been out? Did you been drinking? A little bit. But it was
1:27.9	actually a pretty mild night as far as we went. Yeah. Because you've done other crazy things.
1:33.5	We've done way. I thought way crazier things. So we had just gotten back from Thanksgiving
1:38.9	vacation. How many of you? There were three of us hanging out together that night. It was
1:42.8	a Sunday night. Had a few beers, but really mostly decided to go get a sandwich and walk
1:48.3	to what's called a Wawa market in New Jersey. I know Wawa. You know the Wawa. So we were
1:54.2	walking to the Wawa. And it just so happens that our path, there's a commuter train that
1:57.9	runs across the path. And it was just sitting there off hours. And it's a ladder on the back.
2:03.0	You just climb it like you would a tree or a jungle gym. We really, we really did not think
	...

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