Shoshana Berger is senior editorial director at IDEO, where she has worked on projects ranging from the end of life to modern Judaism to school lunch. She led the launch of IDEO’s publishing platform and of Blueprint, its first large-scale conference. Before IDEO, Shoshana was a senior editor at WIRED, and wrote for the New York Times, Fast Company, TIME, WIRED, and Quartz. In her 20s, she cofounded the DIY design magazine, ReadyMade, later turning it into a book, Ready Made: How to Make (Almost) Everything. Dr. BJ Miller is a longtime hospice & palliative medicine physician and educator. He’s been on faculty at his alma mater, UCSF, since 2007 and has worked in all settings of care: hospital, clinic, residential facility, and home.BJ’s career has been dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human centered approach, on a policy as well as a personal level. Led by his own experiences as a patient, BJ advocates for the roles of our senses, community and presence in designing a better ending. His interests are in working across disciplines to affect broad-based culture change, cultivating a civic model for aging and dying and furthering the message that suffering and dying are fundamental and intrinsic aspects of life.“Next to birth, death is one of our most profound experiences,” Miller and Berger write. “Shouldn’t we talk about it, prepare for it, use what it can teach us about how to live?”. When it comes to death, we are all beginners. That is why Shoshana and BJ co-authored the book A Beginner’s Guide to the End, which is is a clear-eyed and big-hearted action plan for approaching the end of life, written to help readers feel more in control of an experience that so often seems anything but controllable. In this episode we discuss A Beginners Guide to the End. Talking to Shoshana and BJ has been one of the most amazing experiences ever since I started this Podcast. We dived deep into what we can learn from this collective pause we currently are living in and putting this newly acquired insights into practice, we discussed the importance of revisiting our own nature, one that includes mortality, why is it important to have conversations about death and how to have them with oneself and with others, we also talked about the ways in which we can foster a sense of community in an atomized society, and more,This conversation has been one that will stay with me for a long time. I am very honored and grateful with BJ and Shoshana for joining me in a deep conversation. Enjoy!---Website: https://www.abgtte.com--- Highlights ---(3:20) How would you introduce yourself to your younger self?(7:43) How should we approach the “pause” we are living during lockdown? What should we reflect upon?(13:44) How can we put into practice what we have learned during this “collective existential practice”?(18:10) What do our cities and the way they are designed tell about ourselves?(21:10) Revisiting our nature.(22:30) How should we deal with our mortality and conversations around death?(30:21) In an-ever increasing atomized society, how can we redesign our communities so we can flourish together as human beings?(37:40) We have agency in our perspective - WOW(40:00) We often talk about our own mortality, but what can we do to support others who are going through a difficult period in their lives?(45:45) Closing remarks.--- Support Us ---Thanks for tuning in for this edition of Through Conversations Podcast!If you find this episode interesting, don't miss out on new conversations and subscribe to the podcast at any podcast feed you use, and leave me a review. Also, consider sharing it with someone you think might enjoy exploring life and all the topics that surround it Through Conversations.--- Keep The Conversation Going ---Instagram:@thruconvpodcastTwitter: @ThruConvPodcastWebsite: throughconversations.com--- Credits ---Our New, Awesome Music by Joe Lyle.  More info can be found at https://joelyledrums.comHosted, Produced by Alex Levy.