Dr. Jill Biden - part 2

0:02Speaker 1:Hi, everyone, it's Sophia.

0:04Speaker 2:Welcome to Work in Progress. We're back for part two with doctor B. Let's get back on stage. I know for you, women's health is a big life calling. You launched the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research. Why was that the next right thing for you as the first Lady?

0:36Speaker 3:Well, you know, I was in the White House. I was grading papers. It was a Saturday, I think it was near Easter, and Maria Schreiver came in, First Lady of California. I'm period and former first Lady, and so we started talking about women's health. And she said to me, Jill, do you realize that all the research until the mid nineteen nineties has been done on men. No women in those studies, no research men. So all the diagnoses we would get, all the prescription medicines were based on men, their you know, physiques, their weights, et cetera. Oh, and even the mice were male mice. How can you, I mean, how can you study menopause in a male mouse?

1:29Speaker 1:I mean right, it's crazy.

1:31Speaker 3:So anyway, so I went to Joe after Maria and I spoke. I went up to him and you know, I said, Joe, there's a big problem. We have to solve it. And he said, you're right. So, I mean, this is what I love about Joe. He took a problem in and he tackled it, and he, you know, found an answer. So we started the White House Women's Initiative on Health and in one year we put a billion dollars into funding and research.

2:01Speaker 1:For women's health. Now, and you know, we.

2:06Speaker 3:Got to keep going. Women have to keep fighting for ourselves. We do. I mean in all areas, which I'm sure you agree, in all the social areas. We have to keep fighting the things that have been taken away from us. We can't give up. I'm a sixties girl. A lot of you girls are women here who were in the sixties. Look what we had to fight for, equal rights, equal pay, women's sports. How about money for women's sports, and so much that we fought for and we got to an extent.

2:38Speaker 3:But now it seems like it's rolling back. So we have to say to the younger women, come on, take up the mantle and move forward. I mean, I'm just you can tell I'm passionate.

2:48Speaker 2:I'm with you, you know, and I think it's so important that we all know the stats.

2:55Speaker 1:I mean ladies, we need to know. But also like shout out to all the guys here.

2:59Speaker 2:You're here to listen to you ladies, talk like you're on the right side of history.

3:03Speaker 1:And you should know these facts.

3:05Speaker 3:You know.

3:07Speaker 1:You saw us through some of those fights.

3:10Speaker 2:I am part of the first American generation of truly free women, the first nineteen seventy four you couldn't until nineteen seventy four.

3:21Speaker 1:Well, in nineteen seventy three, obviously, wrote which they took.

3:23Speaker 2:Nineteen seventy four was when you could finally lease an apartment on your own.

3:29Speaker 1:I believe nineteen eighty eight was.

3:31Speaker 2:The first time a woman could get a bank loan by herself. Nineteen ninety three it was the first time we were included in a clinical trial. And guess what, It's also the same year we could finally wear pants on the floor of.

3:40Speaker 1:Congress, nineteen ninety three.

3:43Speaker 2:Like when you think about how it's been a hot second.

3:48Speaker 1:Yeah. And by the way, we couldn't even.

3:49Speaker 2:Get the era ratified because by the time we got the forty eight state to sign it, all the bros in the halls of government were like, m took too long.

3:57Speaker 1:We're not gonna let you have it. So the idea that.

4:00Speaker 2:We've even been totally free is a ruse. But what we've made like just close enough to equal progress that they're panicking And now the tradwives are on Instagram and now they're like.

4:13Speaker 1:Women shouldn't vote, and I'm like, excuse you. We had a revolution about this, Like yeah, what?

4:19Speaker 2:So that feels like everybody gets a little bit of info to take home. You're welcome for your initiative. When I saw you doing this investing work, I was so excited about it because it's been an area of importance for me.

4:37Speaker 1:I am so lucky to be in.

4:40Speaker 2:A community of incredible women. I'm so lucky to have intergenerational friendships with incredible women who've shared their stories. And the disparities in healthcare, not just for women but for women of color are insane and it only can happen because there's so little money for us in general. So just a few more things for you to take home.

5:02Speaker 1:You're welcome.

5:03Speaker 3:Well, wait a minute, it was in nineteen seventy four. That was about when I got my first teaching job. Up do everything anyway, I got my first teaching job, and I was telling you this or who anyway, I forget who I was telling. But anyway, it's been a long book toory.

5:19Speaker 1:You're doing it.

5:20Speaker 3:Okay. So the same week that I was hired, I was hired in an English department. I got seven five hundred dollars more nurse my first job. A man in the same English department, same job. You know what, he got ten thousand? Yes, yes, crazy. And I went to buy a car.

5:41Speaker 1:Guess what.

5:42Speaker 3:They made my father's co sign.

5:44Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, they made my father co sign for this.

5:48Speaker 3:I mean, you know here, I had my own teaching job.

5:50Speaker 1:I was so proud.

5:51Speaker 3:And then they're saying, ah, get your father.

5:54Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's the thing.

5:55Speaker 2:The independence didn't matter because the policy hadn't caught up, and the women's health investing in particular is honestly a crisis we have to solve. Only one to three percent of all private healthcare research and development dollars go to conditions that affect women.

6:18Speaker 1:So we're fifty one percent of the population. There's literally more of us.

6:23Speaker 2:Everyone came from us, and we get one percent of the money.

6:27Speaker 1:The math is not mathing. Less than two percent.

6:30Speaker 2:Of private healthcare investments in capital target women's specific.

6:34Speaker 1:Conditions and only five percent of all.

6:37Speaker 2:Overall global R and D is dedicated to women's health. So when you're hopefully signed up on the five calls, app to bug your elected officials.

6:48Speaker 1:Bug them about.

6:49Speaker 2:This also, and encourage them to continue the work of the Biden's Healthcare Initiative on women.

6:58Speaker 1:Because we should, we should, we should? Yeah? Yeah, now, Oh, I have so many more questions. I'm looking at the timer. I'm starting to panic. Okay, We're gonna be fine.

7:13Speaker 2:I'm curious because I know out of that I got to see you guys talk about it at CGI a couple of years ago.

7:20Speaker 1:I know the cancer Moonshot initiative is so deeply.

7:24Speaker 2:Personal for your family, and I'm curious, in the years since you announced the research funding and the moonshot, are there any really exciting developments you want to share with people, Because health hardship is terrifying, and sometimes when we have good news, I feel like we should shout it from the roof.

7:43Speaker 3:Yes, I mean there are a lot of advancements in cancer. I you know, cancer has been rampant really in my family. Both my parents died from it. My sister had a stem cell transplant with because of lymphoma and lived. She's great. And then you know, our son Bo died of gliablastoma, and which was really tough. I mean we did everything we could, I mean everything, the diet, the I mean, going to different trials, getting him on different medicines, and you know, it was just one of those things that I just as a mother, I mean I just never ever ever believe that, you know, God would take him.

8:35Speaker 3:And now I mean there's this cruel irony that, with the cancer Moonshot and all that we've done for cancer and will continue to do that, my husband, you know, ended up with stage four prostate cancer, which is bad enough, but I want to tell the men here in the audience that prostate cancer they do have a cure for. I mean, you can be cured from that. Unfortunately, for Joe, it metastasized to his bones and that just changed the whole ball game. And so now Joe will live, I mean his whole life will He will live with cancer, which means that he's on really strong medicines that make him really tired and you know, have such strong side effects.

9:30Speaker 3:And so we keep fighting and you know, and there's so much that really that we're going to continue to do and I you know, people cannot forget to go get their screenings. I mean, I think in COVID everybody was scared to death to go into a hospital at doctor's office, and so the screenings went way down. But I want you all to think about this, if you can think about all of you who are should be getting like a mammogram or a dexa, you know, the bone skin. You just stick your hand in an X ray machine. It doesn't hurt or anything. Prostate cancer, breast cancer.

10:12Speaker 3:You know you may not know this, but in the early nineteen nineties, four four of my friends were diagnosed with breast cancer and I thought, oh my god, what can I do. I have to do something. And I thought, I'm not a doctor, but well I am a doctor, you're a doctor. So I developed a program. I went into every school in the state of Delaware, and it was so long ago. In Dover High School, they made the girls have a permission slip because we were saying the word breast. Honest to God, that's the truth. And anyway, we went in with breast models and we showed women what it felt like, you know, a lumpy breast or if you could feel something in your breast, and we taught them good health practices. And anyway, I did that I think for twenty years. Wow, and then I you know, I finally had to stop because I was a second lady.

11:19Speaker 3:But that was my beginning of work, you know, trying to fight against awareness and prevention, which I think is really where we should be focusing, is prevention with all these cancers. Yeah.

11:33Speaker 1:So yeah, so think about it.

11:36Speaker 3:Think about getting your screening if you haven't. And I know it's hard, and I know you're afraid a lot of you, but you're going to be more afraid if you get that negative diagnosis like Jogott.

11:47Speaker 2:Yeah.

11:48Speaker 1:Yeah, Well we all wish him very well.

11:52Speaker 3:I know, please tell him.

11:53Speaker 2:Boston said, happy anniversar, and thank you. I mean, frankly, we're very lucky. But he lent you to us on your anniversary. It's like we got a gift.

12:04Speaker 1:So I hope we.

12:05Speaker 2:Can send some real positivity his way. And I think it's a really amazing thing that you've chosen not only to do the advocacy work, but so many of these moments that are so devastating for families. As you've shared, you as a family have shared with our families, and you've made us all feel less alone in grief or illness. And I'm guessing I can speak for everyone in the room in this moment when I say thank you, because to know you're not alone in that that also helps save people.

12:44Speaker 3:Well, everybody's touched by cancer. I bet every person in this auditorium has been touched by cancer by someone they love or themselves.

12:55Speaker 1:I think there's.

12:55Speaker 2:Something about the presence with which and the frankness with which you speak about it, though, that not everybody does. And I want to give you your flowers for that. You really you know, you've chosen to model not just the good. And you talk in the book about how sometimes the job of a first lady is to sit with people in grief, whether that is a family who's lost someone to cancer or mothers who've lost their sons in Ukraine. I mean you've made it universal in a way when a lot of people want to put it on the bottom shelf and not talk about it.

13:38Speaker 1:Do you see the willingness to sit with grief.

13:44Speaker 2:As a form of activism also, well I never thought of it that way, but definitely for me.

13:51Speaker 3:And I'll just speak for myself as a former first Lady, I felt that when Americans something tragic had happened, like UVOLDI, horrible Maui, the fires in Maui, surfside in Florida. I mean, there were so many times when Joe and I would go and sit with families and just talk to them and empathize and about grief, and I just think that's part of the role of a first Lady and a president to take care of people who are experiencing grief and loss and so.

14:41Speaker 2:But well, it's just such a gorgeous act of compassion.

14:47Speaker 1:We miss it. I miss compassion so much. You know, you you.

14:54Speaker 2:Have spent fifty years together. You share wonderful pieces of your really relationship. I love that he had to propose five times. I'm like, good for you, doctor b. But you also share about your female friendships. You know, you talk about your sisterhood. You also talk about the peculiar pressure placed on women in the first place. How you write in the book about this, and I think most women, while we've never been the first Lady, we get this part.

15:25Speaker 2:You say that being the first Lady could feel like a catch twenty two because you're encouraged to use your platform to do good, but not be too aggressive in pursuing policy goals lest you be seen as overreaching. And if you knew too little about what you were talking about, or maybe pretended to to not be overreaching, I don't know, then you're like some kind of embarrassment. So the balancing act, you know, your story is specific, but the balancing act I think is very universal for us. How have you figured out how to do that? And are your female friendships kind of the key?

16:00Speaker 3:Well, I think they probably are the key. And I think every first lady has done the role a different way. I mean, if you remember roseland Carter sat in on cabinet meetings, and I don't remember that she was criticized for that. It was just like that was part of their partnership, and so she did. God forbid I should sit in it on a cabinet meeting because then it would look I mean I was criticized. I went to one in four years that I walked in to talk about women's health for like ten minutes. And so it's true.

16:34Speaker 3:You can't know too much or know too little, or be aggressive or not aggressive enough. So it is a fine line, and you know it's nice to I mean I always felt like so supported by really the women in my friendships. I mean they've meant the world to me. Of course, as you know, I have four sisters. But the cool thing is like I've been supported like my friends Mary Anne and her sister in laws here are Annie and her parents are here, people that are just have been, and people in my staff are in this audience who work for me like yeah, BP. I mean, you know, and I've always felt that support and it's a really important part of my life. And I don't know whether it came it stems from growing up with four sisters and being so close to my mother and my grandmother's I mean it just was. I mean, my poor dad, honestly, God, he said, even that is a female.

17:44Speaker 3:But he felt overwhelmed. But he handled it, okay, he could hold his own.

17:49Speaker 1:I love it.

17:50Speaker 2:Who when you think about inspirational women, who inspires you these days?

17:55Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, there are so many inspirational women today. For instance, I just wrote a note to Billy Jean King.

18:05Speaker 1:Great Us.

18:06Speaker 3:Does anybody know why she got her college degree? Yes?

18:14Speaker 1:And she got her college It was in the paper. You must have missed it, but I thought, good for you.

18:20Speaker 3:I mean, remember that tennis match and she was the winner.

18:23Speaker 1:I mean, I love nineteen seventy three.

18:25Speaker 3:Yes, I love female athletes and what they're doing because I feel like, you know, having gone through the Title nine and money for women's sports, that women's sports is finally coming into its own and.

18:37Speaker 1:I love that.

18:41Speaker 3:So they inspire me and the women I think, you know, in women's in health research, I mean these young scientists that are making all these discoveries for endometriosa, osteoporosis. I mean some of you in here are maybe a little bit older. And I know, is now this new and hot topic no pun intended, is menopause. So now we're centering on that. But I have to tell you, I mean I'm past that. I'm like this next wave. And I told my daughter, I'm in my last quarter and she's like, Mommy, don't say that. But anyway, there are all these women postmenopause who are like, is this normal?

19:27Speaker 3:I mean the things that we are now experiencing in our sixties and our seventies and our eighties, like we don't have answers. We don't have answers.

19:38Speaker 1:Because the mice are men.

19:39Speaker 3:Yes, well, so there has to be a national conversation about aging so that when something happens to you or your spouse, you don't say, what the heck is this? That we have facts and we know where we're going. We got to start this as American.

20:00Speaker 2:Yeah, especially when you think about you know this notion that this is a country built on a dream, right, the American dream doesn't stop because you retire.

20:11Speaker 1:That should be.

20:11Speaker 3:Your best life.

20:13Speaker 1:If you get to retire, you should be like living it up.

20:15Speaker 2:I want you to be having a time, and you're right, you shouldn't be looking around going what's happening to me?

20:23Speaker 1:And does anyone care? You know? It should shift?

20:28Speaker 3:It should.

20:30Speaker 2:I have a couple of just like quick little fun questions. Okay, the last few minutes, if I may, you're not in the fish bowl anymore. But there are still lots of people with the badges around them.

20:43Speaker 3:Thank God for them. I had to honestly, God, thank god. Oh they're so wonderful, so great.

20:48Speaker 2:I had to run back into my dressing room to grab something and like four.

20:52Speaker 1:Dudes turned up. I was like, it's just me, just hobgobbling around. I just needed my papers.

20:56Speaker 3:Please don't tackle me, honestly, so kind. I just can't thank them enough, all of them, Thank you, Thank you secret service.

21:06Speaker 1:Pretty incredible team you have. Yeah, what does a typical day look like?

21:11Speaker 2:Now?

21:12Speaker 3:Like?

21:12Speaker 1:Can do you open windows? How often do you.

21:16Speaker 3:Wear for a walk? Actually we do have bulletproof glass in the back of our house because now we have to write because there's like a lot of craziness and but a typical day. I'm an early riser. I love the morning, and so I get up early. And we have two new black lab puppies. Okay, so here's a quiz question. Their names are Scout and Boo. Where does it come from to kill a mockingbird?

21:45Speaker 1:Yes?

21:46Speaker 3:Good, some of you are readers. I love that. So anyway, so I make sure the dogs and Willow are all fed and taken care of, and then I just sit, like you know, just sit and have quiet and just appreciate really my life and what I've been given and the opportunities. And then I go to exercise every morning. And I went this morning to bar and if you know bar three, wow, So I cycle, I do bar pilates. You know, I'm a big exerciser. And then I have like a ton of things to do between women's health and writing, and you know, Joe's writing his book. He's always home. I always have to make him breakfast. He's a terrible cook.

22:40Speaker 1:So the day is full.

22:42Speaker 3:You know. Usually my kids, my grandkids are in and out of the house. They're bringing their friends. I mean half the time, I don't even know who's sleeping in my house, you know, because I just come with their friends. And that's the way I want it. That's the way it's always been, and everybody's welcome, and so anyway, that's that's my life.

23:03Speaker 2:I love that.

23:04Speaker 1:I think a full house is kind of a.

23:06Speaker 3:Yeah true, yeah, yeah.

23:08Speaker 2:What as our exercise guru on top of all the other things you do? What what's this phrase that you've coined, soul cycle diplomacy.

23:18Speaker 3:Oh, this is so much fun. So when I would go to foreign countries, I would still cycle because they have soul cycle all over the world. And so it was we were in England and and so I cycled there with got to get Rishi. I'm thinking ahead of thank you, and so anyway we cycled together. Sorry, I had that just one of those moments. And then in Paris, I went to the cycle center, and so I would always invite people to cycle with me, I mean, leaders of foreign countries, and sometimes they came and sometimes they didn't.

23:59Speaker 3:But it was so fun to go because even in France, and you know, I don't really know French that well, but you just followed the person ahead of you and you just know it was just it was just funny. So and it was fun and it was a way to connect on a different level. And so and you know, Sophie Trudeau and I, I mean just we just it's another way to connect with people that isn't like stuppy and you know that you just go have fun. So that's what soul cycle diplomacy was.

24:33Speaker 2:Well, it strikes me as you bringing some of that normalcy to an extraordinary situation, or perhaps it terrary is.

24:43Speaker 1:The word I should have used.

24:44Speaker 2:I have another little pop culture question, because I did hear that you just went and saw Bono at the sphere And I do know, because you know, you did admit it once and now everything we've ever said is on the internet.

24:59Speaker 1:I do Oh, he is your celebrity crush.

25:02Speaker 3:That's true, And I know, like in the world should save this on my anniversary though.

25:10Speaker 1:Joe's not here. He's not here, I know in the world.

25:15Speaker 2:Like most people would say, I'm intimidated by a rock star. But does a president get intimidated by a rock star?

25:23Speaker 3:No, not at all.

25:24Speaker 1:I didn't think so, but I needed to know.

25:26Speaker 2:No.

25:26Speaker 3:But can I tell you the Bono story?

25:28Speaker 2:Yes?

25:29Speaker 1:Please? Okay.

25:30Speaker 3:So it was so anyway, Joe and Bono started out as friends, and so Bona would come to the White House and when he's talking to you, like all he does is speak poetry, Like he just recites poetry. I mean, he's like so his soul is so beautiful, and he does so many good things in the world. I mean, he's a humanitarian. He's really a good decent man. So Anthony took me to the Sphere for my birthday one year. We were out there for something, probably campaigning, and so you two was there and so Bono said, come on backstage and meet the band and you know, meet my wife, etc.

26:13Speaker 3:This is the beautiful thing. So before they go on stage, they get in a circle and they pray, and that's what we did. We got in a circle, we held hands and we prayed before they went out on stage. Then they go out and they play this crazy rock music and everything, and then the last song of the night he dedicated to me, come on, I love it. I love it now you see why? Yeah? I mean we won't tell Joe.

26:50Speaker 1:You know, you tell them tomorrow.

26:54Speaker 2:After everything you have experienced as a teacher, a mother, a wife, a first lady, a memoirrist.

27:01Speaker 3:What I love that word memoir?

27:03Speaker 1:I know, isn't it? It feels it has a nice mouth feel.

27:07Speaker 3:What's your favorite word?

27:09Speaker 2:Oh?

27:10Speaker 1:My favorite word? I mean not to be cheesy, probably love love.

27:18Speaker 3:Oh what a great answer. Yeah, Oh my god.

27:22Speaker 1:You know what other word though?

27:24Speaker 2:Has one of my favorite mouth feels? What My favorite word in Spanish?

27:28Speaker 3:Esa eskierta. What does that mean?

27:32Speaker 1:Is it? It's a right or left? It is left right? Okay?

27:35Speaker 3:Great?

27:36Speaker 1:Left right now? No, By the way, I just started nice Spanish lessons on due lingo. I did take fresh and I'm not good at that either.

27:42Speaker 2:But like the word just saying it, I'm like that, like I don't need it sounds sexy to me and.

27:50Speaker 1:It feels nice and it means left. But you know, I think progressives are sexy. So maybe we're onto something here.

27:57Speaker 3:What's your least favorite word? Well, we all those, Wow, we know.

28:07Speaker 1:I think I think it's I think we share it.

28:13Speaker 3:You've done so much, you know, you've like.

28:18Speaker 2:You've just lived this big, beautiful life, and you've set an example for so many of us, and and you know you've checked so many things off the list, the bucket list, you've sol cycled with you know, foreign leaders like that.

28:31Speaker 1:But I'm curious with all the things you've done and everything you have to be so proud of. What in your life still feels like a work in progress?

28:42Speaker 3:Oh? Everything, I mean everything is still a work in progress. I mean I'm not giving up, and I don't know, I still have a lot to do. I just, you know, like I said my teaching, I want to I do want to do stuff with women's self. I do want to do prevention of cancer. I do you know going into the prisons. I just I have a lot to do.

29:03Speaker 1:Plus garden, plus garden me too. I don't know you were a gardener.

29:07Speaker 3:Oh yeah, okay, we'll talk after we have a lot of talk.

29:10Speaker 1:Flowers.

29:11Speaker 2:Yeah, I need your tips because I've been a West Coast gardener my whole life, and how I'm an East Coast.

29:15Speaker 1:Gardener, like, what is winter? Yeah, my plants?

29:18Speaker 3:I know, Okay, we can talk.

29:20Speaker 2:This will be, this will be for later, but for now we're out of time and those are all my oh.

29:25Speaker 1:My gosh, we are I know. It's been so much fun.

29:28Speaker 2:Thank you for coming, Thank you for coming me. Thank you help me up, thank you, Thank you guys, thank you for being here.