And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN audio,

The Axxwiles.

With your host, David Axelrod.

We're finishing our holiday break, so instead of a new episode I'm sharing, instead a special

episode of Anderson Cooper's extraordinary podcast all there is.

It's a conversation about grief with President Joe Biden who has faced more than his share in life.

In it he offers moving memories, lessons, and insights that are well worth hearing.

I hope you'll listen and we'll be back next week. Grief when it comes is nothing we expect it to be.

Joan Didian wrote that in her book The Year of Magical Thinking, and boy, was she right?

It's nothing we expect it to be and it's different for everybody.

So wherever you are in your grief, I hope you find something in this podcast today that's helpful.

In a few minutes I'll sit down with President Joe Biden in the White House for a conversation

about the losses in his life and how he lives with them.

It is, I think, the first time any sitting US president has agreed to do an entire

interview solely focused on grief.

A couple days before the interview, I was going through a box of stuff in my basement that belonged

to my brother Carter.

He died by suicide in 1988. I don't have a lot of photos

of Carter visible in my house. I still find it too painful. In the box there were a bunch of pictures

of him but two in particular stood out.

A Polaroid I'd seen before and a frame black and white photo which was one of my mom's favorites.

It was taken by a friend of his Winky Lewis shortly before he graduated Princeton.

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