Shoshana and BJ met while working on a project for a local hospice organization. They went on to collaborate on BJ’s TED talk, “What Really Matters at the End of Life,” the response to which surprised them both. When Shoshana approached BJ with the idea of writing a book, he couldn’t say no. In order to do the topic justice, it felt important to have one author who was inside of health care, and one who was out.
BJ Miller
BJ Miller is a hospice and palliative care physician who has worked in many settings, inpatient, outpatient, and home, and now sees patients and families at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. BJ also acted as executive director for the Zen Hospice Project for five years, learning about the administration of health care and how difficult it can be for patients and families to find the care they need. He speaks all over the country and beyond on the theme of living well in the face of death. He has been featured in The New York Times and interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, Tim Ferriss, and Krista Tippett. BJ lives in Mill Valley with his chosen fur family, Maysie, the Muffin Man, and Darkness, and loves exploring nature — including human — especially from any two-wheeled vehicle (or four).
Shoshana Berger
Shoshana Berger has worked in publishing for more than twenty years as a freelance writer, senior editor at Wired, and editor-in-chief of ReadyMade, the magazine she cofounded in 2001. She became editorial director of the global design firm IDEO in 2013, where she has worked on projects related to the end of life, modern Judaism, and school lunch. In 2018, she moved to Denmark for a year to work with the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and to learn why everyone is so happy up in the Nordics. She has written for the New York Times, Wired, Travel + Leisure, Sunset, Spin, Popular Science, Marie Claire, and The San Francisco Chronicle. She has spoken about how to redesign our experience of death at Creative Mornings and Slush. Shoshana lives in Berkeley with her best friend Tony Saxe, and children, Cleo and Judah.