B.J. Miller is an America palliative care physician, author, and teacher at UCSF School of Medicine. At the age of 19, when studying at Princeton University, B.J. suffered a near-death accident when he was electrocuted on a train line, leading to the amputation of three of his limbs. Having confronted his own mortality at a young age, B.J. has since dedicated his life to palliative care, and is now a globally renowned commentator on our relationship with death and dying. Accompanying Chris in this episode as he faces up to his own aging and mortality, B.J. helps him understand the physical changes of growing old, as well as the feelings of loss that often surface during the final chapters of our lives.

Academy Award® -nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky was born and raised in Brooklyn. His most recent project is the A24 film The Whale, starring Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau and Samantha Morton. MacArthur-winning playwright Samuel D. Hunter adapted the screenplay from his critically acclaimed play.

Aronofsky wrote and directed 2017’s mother! starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris. The New York Times hailed the film calling it a “master class.” Before that, Aronofsky made Noah, the 2014 biblical epic starring Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Connelly and Emma Watson. It was a box office hit and Aronofsky’s largest opening.

In 2010, Aronofsky received a Best Director Academy Award nomination for the indie box office phenomenon Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman, who won a Best Actress Academy Award for her performance. 2008’s The Wrestler was touted as a “bravura work of art” by Entertainment Weekly and “a film of authentic beauty and commanding consequence” by the Wall Street Journal. The film won Golden Globes® for actor Mickey Rourke and singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen. Aronofsky won the Golden Lion for the best film at the Venice Film Festival. He was the third American director to win that award in the oldest film festival in the world.

As a producer under his Protozoa label, Aronofsky has been responsible for Jackie, which garnered three Academy Awards; the documentary Some Kind of Heaven, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival; artist Prune Nourry’s docu-memoir Serendipity, which made its world premiere at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival; Pacified which won the Golden Shell top prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival; Catch the Fair One, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and won the Audience Award; and the documentary feature The Territory, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and won both the Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Craft in the World Cinema Documentary category.

In 2021, he executive produced the six-part National Geographic docu-series Welcome to Earth, starring Will Smith as he explores some of the planet’s most intriguing and inaccessible corners. In 2018, Aronofsky executive produced the Emmy® -nominated National Geographic series One Strange Rock and the virtual reality experience SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime. The VR experience, featuring the voices of Jessica Chastain and Patti Smith, closed a record-breaking deal out of Sundance and won the Golden Lion as well.

Up next is the Netflix thriller The Good Nurse, starring Noah Emmerich, Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne; the six-part series Limitless, starring Chris Hemsworth for National Geographic; Black Gold for Paramount+; and Kindred, an adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s influential novel for FX.

Aronofsky is an ardent supporter of the environment and sits on the boards of The Sierra Club and The School for Field Studies. Aronofsky has received Humanitarian Awards from PETA and The Humane Society of the United States, which honored him with its inaugural Humane Filmmaker Award.

Alua Arthur is a death doula and founder of Going with Grace.

Ross Edgley is an extreme athlete and sports science author.