Dr. Jill Biden - part 1

0:02Speaker 1:Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. At a time when Americans are grappling with urgent questions about democracy, leadership, and the future of the nation, perspective matters because history is not just shaped by elections or policies or headlines, but by people, by their character, their convictions, and the choices they make when the stakes are the highest. Very few people have witnessed those choices more closely than doctor Jill Biden. As an educator, advocate, first lady, and one of the country's most respected public servants, Doctor b has spent decades championing the values of service, empathy, and civic engagement while helping us navigate some of the most defining chapters of modern American life. In her new book, Biden takes readers beyond the public record and into the human stories behind history. View from the East Wing is a deeply personal look at the relationships, challenges, and moments that shaped her years in the White House, and a chance to reflect on leadership, resilience, and hope at a time when all three feel more essential than ever. I am

1:23Speaker 1:so honored to say I am here in Boston tonight. Doctor Joel Biden come join.

1:29Speaker 2:Us as I bring out Sophia, Who's gonna join me in this conversation.

1:47Speaker 1:Come on, guys, doctor B, Doctor B in Boston. I love this.

1:55Speaker 2:Ah, Hi, hey, buddy, we can They're the only ones who probably can understand my Philly accent because.

2:01Speaker 3:They have love have their own.

2:05Speaker 1:I I'm so thrilled to be here with all of you tonight. I'm still just so tickled that you asked me to come. And also during Pride, Happy Pride, everyone.

2:14Speaker 4:We're so happy.

2:19Speaker 1:You're I have to say, and I'll tell you why we're here. I've been lucky enough to know the bidens for quite some time. I signed on. I think it was the end of seven for the first election with you all and President Obama. It was a night a bunch of US healthcare advocates had been asked to come to something at the White House, and everybody was like, oh my god, we can't believe we're here. And Joe was talking to all of us really just like what are you passionate about? What are you concerned about? And brocc Lean's in and goes.

2:54Speaker 5:Yo, we gotta go, and he just like you know, we were all in our twenties and he he was just giving us all his time and attention, and there were no cameras in that room.

3:04Speaker 1:And every time I've been around him, around you, you're both just so genuinely.

3:11Speaker 3:Caring about somethings. So thank you.

3:13Speaker 1:I'm thrilled to be with you to.

3:16Speaker 3:Now.

3:18Speaker 1:I got questions. I did homework. Nobody's surprised. I'm curious about something because obviously part of writing a memoirs looking back, and you have such an incredible life to look back at, all of your service, all of your teaching, but before that, before you were doctor Biden or missus Biden in class to someone, I'm curious about you when you were somebody's student. When you think about your life, if you could walk out in front of this building and run into yourself at.

3:54Speaker 2:Ten years old, do you think do you think that little girl would see herself?

4:00Speaker 1:You would you see yourself in her? Well?

4:03Speaker 2:I never would have predicted how fun my life took. I mean, quite honestly, you know, I grew up really in an idyllic I mean idyllic childhood I just had.

4:18Speaker 3:My parents were really young. There were lots of fun.

4:21Speaker 2:I mean, we would have tomato fights during the summer out on the lawn. You know, having five four sisters was just so great.

4:31Speaker 3:And I loved school, as you know, when I was in those early years.

4:35Speaker 2:By high school, I was cutting class like the rest of everybody else.

4:39Speaker 1:She's a good time you guys.

4:41Speaker 2:Yeah, so sneaking out, you know, to go eat a HOGI anyway, So, but my ten year old self, I don't think I've changed all that much.

4:54Speaker 3:I mean, I still.

4:56Speaker 2:I still loved to read and I loved to write, and so I don't think I changed that much.

5:04Speaker 1:No, that's pretty cool, especially given the life. Yeah, I'm curious why this felt like the time, because view from the East wing is it's personal, it's historic. Did you just kind of feel ready to put it all out there given the state of the world in twenty twenty.

5:25Speaker 2:Six, You know, I was definitely ready to put it out And when Joe got out of office, I just felt that so many people went out and wrote books and I and I, you know, I read parts of many of them, and I thought, and I saw things that weren't true or had been you know, misconstrued, and I thought, I want to write my own reflections of how I saw things it and that encompassed, like the whole four years. It encompassed travel, state, dinners, camp, David teaching, all the things I did, and then I included the chapters that were the really, you know, hard ones to write about Joe getting out. But I want you to know, because many of you have not read the book, it's not a political book. It's a book about, like you're saying, an ordinary woman who was given the opportunity to live an extraordinary life.

6:27Speaker 3:And it's my reflections on that.

6:34Speaker 1:I will say as a reader. What was so touching to me about it is you. You didn't have to say, hey, I'm reminding you all that there's people in here in this political world, but you offered us such a personal view into a space that I think a lot of us on the outside forget. Most days there's people trying to do the best they can and sometimes the only decisions you're given are a bad one and a worse one, and you still have to nurture the country through it.

7:09Speaker 1:And I think we all need to remember that we're all just people trying to figure out how to do this and it, I don't know, you did something really really beautiful in it, and not everything you're reflecting on is beautiful. I mean the first Lady's office in the East Wing is.

7:31Speaker 2:I remember that, the East Wing, and that that was horrifying.

7:37Speaker 1:And as a person who's has the ultimate privilege of having been invited to the house on more than one occasion, like you guys still to walk up and you go through security and you give them all your stuff, and then you go through the next one and you give them all your stuff, and you're kind of like, am I gonna get Is this where I get in trouble? Is this where you're gonna.

7:54Speaker 2:Tell me to go?

7:55Speaker 1:Can I still not?

7:56Speaker 3:I still have a gun? Right?

7:58Speaker 6:Well, I would never, But like you get up there and then you walk this path and there's these gates and little steps, and you walk up to the East Wing and it's like, I can't.

8:08Speaker 1:Believe I'm here. And to think it's gone, and to think about the work you and so many other first ladies did in that office, it's crushing. And you reflected on it in a way that hit me. You said, to see it, the innards of the East Wing were spread for everyone to see, like a rare and precious animal that had been hunted and killed. You make it make sense for all of us who'd never had an office there. How do you think about it now as we're a year into the Mayhem.

8:42Speaker 3:Well.

8:44Speaker 2:Half you're and a half.

8:47Speaker 3:Yeah, not that anyone's scouting.

8:50Speaker 2:You know, I love the East wing. And like you're saying, Sophia, I mean you.

8:55Speaker 3:Would families would come in or you.

8:58Speaker 2:Know, to the east, to the east that.

9:00Speaker 3:Was the entrance to the White House.

9:02Speaker 2:And I would hear families or people come in and they'd be so excited and just to be there and take pictures with their family.

9:12Speaker 3:And because it does have this mystique to it.

9:16Speaker 2:And then as you walk down the hallway, one of the things that I did was put artwork of military children so that people would know when they came to the White House how much we honored military families.

9:31Speaker 3:Thank you and thank you military families.

9:36Speaker 2:And then as you continued down, they used to have well when we came in, they had these pictures, and you know, they would just kids would just sort of walk past the pictures.

9:47Speaker 3:And I thought, you know, as a teacher, we learned with all of our senses, and.

9:53Speaker 2:So I changed it so that the pictures would revolve and you'd see like several things that happened, or like the Carter administration or the you know, Barack Obama's administration, all the way down the line, and then you'd walk a little bit further on and there would be the older presidents and the kids would start to look at their phones like, you know, like so disinterested.

10:17Speaker 3:Like what's this.

10:18Speaker 2:So I changed it to have all the first ladies pictures, the ones that you would.

10:24Speaker 3:Know, like Lara Bush and Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton.

10:29Speaker 2:So so then it meant something to kids. And then they went on the tour, and I made it interactive.

10:35Speaker 3:I worked with the History Channel, and.

10:39Speaker 2:I made it so that you could go further into the rooms, you could hear FDR on the radio, you could feel the marble that was made up the marble fireplace. So that kids became really involved with the tour and.

10:55Speaker 3:That they had a really good White House.

10:58Speaker 2:Experience rather than sort of walk by and look at all these paintings where they didn't know what they were looking at. I had to make it meaningful for them.

11:07Speaker 3:So when I.

11:08Speaker 2:Saw it come down and someone you know who will remain nameless at the White House was sending me pictures like Jill, look what he's going on. And that wrecking ball, you know, that kept hitting the concrete.

11:21Speaker 3:And the and the building, and.

11:25Speaker 2:You know it just honest to god, it reminded me of like those elite hunters, you know that go out and shoot these rare and precious animals and then gut them, and or like if you've been like I know you're not from Philly like I am, but you know the butcher shops that hang those animals in the windows with their you know, just hanging everything. It was just so raw and cruel. And you think of all the historical memory of the of the East Wing and all the first ladies who had their office is there not even to mention the gardens and the flowers and the trees and all the beauty that was there for years and years and years gone, yeah gone.

12:18Speaker 1:When you when I read that, I thought about he who shan't be named and his sons who shan't be named. Who are those kinds of trophy hunters? Yeah, who love to put an awful photo like that on Instagram? What an insane thing?

12:38Speaker 3:Where do we We're in the upside down?

12:40Speaker 1:But it really it made me think about that vision where take more, no matter what, for your gain, versus honoring history saying the White House is actually enough and incredible. Yeah, you know, it seems like we're having a conversation about what kind of a future we want to pursue. Do we want to ground ourselves in philosophy and reverence and morality and respect or is everything for sale?

13:16Speaker 3:And I think particularly apparently.

13:20Speaker 1:Well unfortunately hopefully not forever, we have work to do for November. You you have always been someone who acts out of such a place of realness. I was telling her aback sat I was like, my grandpa would would die tonight and be like, she's abroad. I like her, you know, like, you're a real person and a dedicated public servant, and you demand respect, you expect respect. As a teacher, you've taught respect. I'm curious how you think we get back to a nation that is respectful of each other.

14:05Speaker 2:I was in the airport, you know, just minding my own business, just walking down the hall, and one woman, I mean in the middle of everything.

14:13Speaker 3:I mean, she.

14:16Speaker 2:Turned and whipped around and she get yells make America great again, Go Trump.

14:23Speaker 4:And I was like, and I was just walking through the airport, and I thought, what's wrong with her? Yeah, okay, I can't imagine in my wildest dreams like saying that to somebody on the other side, like yelling some random, like mean comment. We have to get back to kindness and to listening to one another.

14:52Speaker 3:And it may not be easy, but we have to do it.

14:55Speaker 2:Yeah, And I think it starts with us.

14:59Speaker 3:I mean, it's starts with us. And I think if we just keep we don't give up, we don't give into it.

15:06Speaker 2:If we just keep pushing forward and just saying listen to us.

15:12Speaker 3:Hear us, we'll hear you too.

15:15Speaker 2:I mean, that's the way it used to be when Joe got into the Senate in nineteen seventy two, that you know, people from both sides of the aisle. And I'm old enough that I remember that, like the Republicans and the Democrats, they would disagree all the time on the floor of the Senate, but then we'd go out to dinner together and we'd go you know, we'd travel together or whatever. But we respected one another's opinions. And so we've got to get back to it.

15:52Speaker 3:What do you think is the pathway?

15:55Speaker 1:I agree, you know, I I think there's We've lost something that I think is really essential, which is the willingness to learn in public. You know, everyone's so scared to get canceled or to say the wrong thing, or to be cringe. I'm like, don't kill what makes you cringe? Kill the cringe. Like, be emotional, be sweet, say something cheesy, tell people you love them.

16:21Speaker 3:You know.

16:22Speaker 1:I think that's part of it, and something that I have learned actually from your husband, that I have learned from watching President Obama and Michelle, even from President Clinton. You know, they served through periods where not all the decisions were great, Like you're doing the best you can with the information you have. The fact that President Biden, the fact that President Clinton were like, oh yeah, we were absolutely wrong on the crime bill, so we got to do something better. Like that's exactly what I want my president to say.

17:00Speaker 3:Yeah, I look at the.

17:01Speaker 1:Data, I got pitched a solution. It was the wrong one. We're gonna fix it. Like this idea that if you make a mistake and you admit it, you're a loser, so you're gonna double down on hurting people.

17:15Speaker 3:I'm like, what are we doing? Yeah?

17:16Speaker 1:So I think that's part of it too, Like we give our kids, whether they're our children or kids we teach, We give them space to learn and rip and repair, and we seem to have lost that in the public discourse, and I think we need it back.

17:33Speaker 3:We definitely need it back. We definitely need it back.

17:35Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, maybe not for the lady who yelled at you in the airport. I'm glad you were nice to her.

17:40Speaker 2:If I had been with you, I want to, But I thought it was.

17:44Speaker 1:So out of I mean, it's out of reason.

17:46Speaker 3:Like why would like who gives you permission?

17:50Speaker 2:Like we've somehow had feel this permission to yell at people or scream at people or say nasty comments.

17:57Speaker 1:I mean, I mean the Internet.

17:59Speaker 2:Yeah, And so maybe that was the beginning of it, or maybe it started more recently.

18:06Speaker 3:I don't know.

18:08Speaker 1:I don't know either. You know, it's interesting, though, because that experience you had in the airport is the byproduct of being a person whose life becomes a fishbowl. And you and many people who've lived in the White House talk about how the White House is kind of a fish bowl. How do you maintain a sense of a private life or normalcy when you live in that house? I mean, you can't open a window, you can't go for a walk, like, what's your life? What's your life in there?

18:41Speaker 3:You can go for a walk and you are in a fish bowl in that you know. Uh, well, our my code name is Capri and.

18:52Speaker 2:Because I'm Italian, I'm a good Italian girl. And then and then Joe's was Celtic, you know, Irish. So anyway, we got the letter c every presidential uh, every president gets a letter from the alphabet and they have to choose their own names. And like our kids were Coaster and Cookie and you know, so they had that.

19:14Speaker 3:They chose themselves. Oh what would you have chosen with a sea?

19:17Speaker 1:Oh? I don't know. I have to think about it.

19:22Speaker 5:All right, I'll give you some so probably canol Canoli, you know I I will good Italian.

19:27Speaker 1:Girl too, I come on, that's cute Carpaccio.

19:30Speaker 3:I don't know.

19:32Speaker 2:So so anyway, anywhere you go, I mean your movements are like you feel like you're chipped, you know how we do with our animals. It was like Capri moving to elevator, Capri going down elevator, Capri walking to the hall. Everywhere you went, you know, you were I mean, they knew every single movement. So I, I don't know, it was such a fish bowl.

20:00Speaker 3:But I felt like because I taught school that two days a week, I would go.

20:06Speaker 2:To Northern Virginia Community College at seven twenty in the morning and I would be, you know, Capri.

20:13Speaker 3:Going down to the cars and Willow. It was so funny. You know, we have a cat, Willow, and so Willow.

20:20Speaker 2:I'd open the door and Willow would go up the stairs and she'd go up to housekeeping and they would they called her Wilita, and so it was so cute. They loved her, and so they would be waiting opening the door for her to come upstairs.

20:36Speaker 3:But teaching.

20:38Speaker 2:Really grounded me because I walked into that classroom and I felt that, I don't know, I felt I could breathe. And you know, the first day of school, well, I was never on the roster because they don't put.

20:51Speaker 3:Your name on for security reasons.

20:54Speaker 2:So the first day of classes, the students were always like, what's going on? Why do we have to put book bags through this mag thing? And I said to them, they're not looking for your drugs.

21:06Speaker 1:You know.

21:08Speaker 2:And then the care and so the first day they were like, oh my god, look who my teacher is. By the second day, they were saying the F word, so like they totally accepted.

21:23Speaker 3:Me as their English teacher. And I loved that. It was it was just very cool for you.

21:30Speaker 1:Yeah, I get what you mean, though, it's a it's a tether to your real life, not that not the projection of what anyone thinks of the White House. I also humble brag for her. You made history doing that. You were the first first lady who held a teaching position. Yes, like, but so cool. Thank you. Why did keeping the job feel like a non for you? Did you know it would be a tether or was it just something that you said, like I'm not putting this on pause.

22:08Speaker 3:No, I felt really strongly about it.

22:11Speaker 2:And you know, I supported Joe in his career and I and he always supported me in my career. Although there were doubts like Jill, really do you you know his staff would say, do you really think you can teach a second lady and I mean his first lady, And I said, well, I'm.

22:29Speaker 3:Going to do it, so you better figure it out. And so but I had worked too hard.

22:36Speaker 2:I loved teaching, I loved my career and I raised three children. I went to graduate school like forever for I got two masters and a doctorate from the University of Delaware at the age of fifty five.

22:53Speaker 3:So I wasn't about to give it up. And I want to say another thing.

22:59Speaker 2:At my age when we went into the White House, you know, I was not about to say to Joe Biden, Hey, would you give me money so I can buy pantyhose?

23:10Speaker 3:I mean, no way. So I had to have my independence.

23:15Speaker 2:And I'll tell you one thing I've really like pounded into my granddaughters and my own daughter is like, you must be financially independent.

23:26Speaker 1:Yes, yes, because all this crowd wife marketing is a ruse and we know it. I'm really curious about this because you've spoken about your plans to teach ged classes in women's prisons, which, again, when we talk about what kind of future we want to build, I think like, oh, look, you want to solve problems on Earth instead of moving to Mars and building a fancy prison for yourself. Crazy crazy that we should like make the only planet of the trees better. But what does that calling feel like for you? Was there something as your time as second lady or your time as first lady that you saw in the carceral system.

24:10Speaker 2:You know I did because my daughter has works with women who have come out of prisons, and she started a women's wellness center and she helps them get jobs or education, mental health. And so she took me to the women's prison, and.

24:29Speaker 3:You know, I spoke to them.

24:30Speaker 2:We had a great conversation, and then I got a pen pal, and so we would write to each other all the time. And I know, it was so funny, like when Anthony, you know, my chief is daft, said what you have a prison pen pal? I mean it's like, yes, Anthony, I do so anyway, So I thought when I left Washington, I you know, I still have it in my blood. And if there are any teachers in this room, I'm sure there are many.

25:01Speaker 3:You know what I mean. Right, It's the best job in the world.

25:07Speaker 2:Every day is so interesting and you get so attached to your students.

25:10Speaker 3:So when we left, I thought, what could I do?

25:14Speaker 2:I don't want to like have a full schedule at a university. And I thought, how great would it be to go into the women's prison and get women who are just about to come out.

25:27Speaker 3:I think that they call it level four and.

25:29Speaker 2:I talked to my community college where I used to teach, and I said, can we come up with this program where I would go into the prisons and teach help them with their ged skills or workforce development. And then this is the good part. One day they would come to the college and they would take they would sit in a classroom so that they would build their self esteem, you know, feel like the college students that they were earn a degree, you go on to get a job.

26:01Speaker 2:I mean that would be like if we could raise them up and give that to them, that that would be like a dream come.

26:08Speaker 3:True, a dream come true.

26:13Speaker 1:Say it's more for part two of our conversation with doctor Tobiden