Transcript

JON BATISTE & SULEIKA JAOUAD on Love, Music, and Caregiving | IMO

Name: JON BATISTE & SULEIKA JAOUAD on Love, Music, and Caregiving | IMO
Uploaded: 2026-01-28
Duration: 1 h 5 min 31 s
Description: Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad explore the profound intersections of love, creativity, and caregiving, sharing insights from their personal and professional journeys, including their collaboration on the documentary "American Symphony." Batiste, a celebrated musician and composer, and Jaouad, a bestselling author and artist, discuss how their experiences shape their artistry and relationships.

From Michelle Obama · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

January 28, 2026 · 1 h 6 min · 9,248 words · 89 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "JON BATISTE & SULEIKA JAOUAD on Love, Music, and Caregiving | IMO", an episode of Michelle Obama published January 28, 2026 (1 h 6 min, about 9,248 words). It mentions 11 people, works and ideas, including John Batiste, Suleika Jwad, American Symphony, Juilliard, Grammy Award.

What this episode is about

Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad explore the profound intersections of love, creativity, and caregiving, sharing insights from their personal and professional journeys, including their collaboration on the documentary "American Symphony." Batiste, a celebrated musician and composer, and Jaouad, a bestselling author and artist, discuss how their experiences shape their artistry and relationships.

Key takeaways

Creative paths can be winding; sometimes, dropping out leads to discovering broader horizons in education.
Multicultural upbringings foster resilience, yet fitting into societal norms often feels like an uphill battle.
Meeting a future partner at band camp—where musical dreams and teenage awkwardness collide.
Oslo has its quirks, but so does small-town America; both can shape unique artistic voices.
Theraflu sponsors creativity—proof that even the flu can’t stifle your artistic adventure.

Who speaks in this episode?

Michelle Obama (Host) · 26 min speaking
John Batiste (Guest) · 20 min speaking
Suleika Jaouad (Guest) · 20 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

0:00 – 10:00: American Symphony, Grammy Award, John Batiste, Suleika Jwad
10:00 – 20:00: Theraflu, We Are
20:00 – 30:00: American Symphony
30:00 – 40:00: John Batiste, Juilliard
40:00 – 50:00: We Are

Notable quotes from "JON BATISTE & SULEIKA JAOUAD on Love, Music, and Caregiving | IMO"

So Suleika Jwad is a writer, artist, and author of the New York Times bestselling memoirs, The Book of Alchemy, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life,.
about Suleika Jwad · at 1:45
In 2021, Batiste released We Are, an album that carried nine Grammy nominations and five wins, including album of the year.
about We Are · at 2:44
The deal with my parents was that I could drop out of high school to go to pre-college Juilliard where we both went.
about Juilliard · at 4:22
Learn more or help someone apply for the fund.
about Theraflu · at 19:30
I called it Social Music, and the band&#39;s name was Stay Human.
about John Batiste · at 35:42

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

John Batiste — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at 2:11
Co-subject of the documentary discussed and a central voice on creativity, identity, and partnership; also referenced for major career milestones (Late Show bandleader, awards, albums).
Suleika Jwad — Person · Main guest · 1 mention · first at 1:45
Primary interview subject for journaling/creative practice, illness narrative, and authorship; provides extensive personal history and relationship story with John Batiste.

Companies & orgs

Juilliard — Company · Referenced institution · 2 mentions · first at 4:26
Juilliard is mentioned as the school where John Batiste and Suleika Jwad attended, highlighting their musical and educational backgrounds.
Pixar — Company · Referenced company · 2 mentions
Pixar is mentioned in relation to John Batiste's Academy Award for the movie Soul.
Substack — Company · Referenced platform · 1 mention · first at 1:59
Substack is mentioned as the platform where Suleika Jwad publishes her newsletter, The Isolation Journals.
She writes the number one literature newsletter on Substack, The Isolation Journals, and in November of 2025, she released The Alchemy Journal,.

Products & tech

American Symphony — Product · Case study · 3 mentions · first at 1:19
American Symphony is mentioned as a documentary featuring Suleika Jwad and John Batiste, which was Oscar-nominated and Grammy Award-winning.
Along with husband John Batiste, Suleika is the subject of the Oscar-nominated and Grammy Award-winning documentary, American Symphony.
The Isolation Journals — Product · Secondary recommendation · 1 mention · first at 2:02
The Isolation Journals is mentioned as a newsletter by Suleika Jwad on Substack, focusing on literature and creative writing.
She writes the number one literature newsletter on Substack, The Isolation Journals, and in November of 2025, she released The Alchemy Journal,.
We Are — Product · Referenced work · 5 mentions · first at 2:45
We Are is mentioned as an album by John Batiste, which received multiple Grammy nominations and wins.
Big Money — Product · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 2:32
Big Money is mentioned as John Batiste's ninth studio album, nominated for Grammy Awards.
His ninth studio album, Big Money, is nominated for three 2026 Grammy Awards.

Places & events

Grammy Award — Event · Referenced event · 2 mentions · first at 2:15
The Grammy Awards are mentioned in relation to John Batiste's achievements and nominations, emphasizing his musical success.
Along with husband John Batiste, Suleika is the subject of the Oscar-nominated and Grammy Award-winning documentary, American Symphony.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 So, where are we? So we&#39;re here to help. Oh you guys, oooooooooooooooo We&#39;re all gonna participate A jingle jangle jangle Ah! Yeah! What you got for us? I am Schellenkrieg Show Ha ha ha ha, I am over

0:53 This episode is brought to you by Theraflu. I&#39;m good, Craig Robinson. Exciting day today Yeah. Yeah. We, I mean, I want to sort of get right into this day because we&#39;ve got two guests. And you know these two and I&#39;m just getting to know them so Dear, dear friends, we&#39;ve gotten to know them, worked as people might know that we were co-producers of American Symphony. Wonderful piece of work and I&#39;m not just saying that because I&#39;m related to you, but. Talk about two creative forces in so many different ways.

1:34 I want to hear about that how they met, you know, so I&#39;m really excited. But Craig, you are always in charge of doing the proper introduction. Yes, I am. Yes, I am going to do a proper introduction. So Suleika Jwad is a writer, artist, and author of the New York Times bestselling memoirs, The Book of Alchemy, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, and Between Two Kingdoms. She writes the number one literature newsletter on Substack, The Isolation Journals, and in November of 2025, she released The Alchemy Journal, a companion piece to the book of alchemy.

2:11 Along with husband John Batiste, Suleika is the subject of the Oscar-nominated and Grammy Award-winning documentary, American Symphony. And John Batista is a seven-time Grammy Academy Award and Emmy Award- winning singer songwriter and composer. His ninth studio album, Big Money, is nominated for three 2026 Grammy Awards. Just keeps ragging them up. Including Best Americana album. In 2021, Batiste released We Are, an album that carried nine Grammy nominations and five wins, including album of the year. Batiste accolades also include an Academy Award for Pixar&#39;s Soul and seven year tenure as band leader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

3:07 So without further ado, Let&#39;s introduce John and Suleika. Come on out. Welcome to IMO, my dear dear. Thank you for being here, you guys settle in. Can you squeeze in there? Referring to this. Yeah, me as well. All the way, all the way. Thank you, guys. No, I wanted to be in here. Put this, I didn&#39;t know if I should put this in the official bio but also fellow Princeton grad. Well, yeah, that&#39;s right. Sulayka is like a legend on the campus when we went over there. Mm. You graduated top of your class, you showed them a thing or two.

3:50 Yeah. I think we both grew up in households where education was the priority. But we also had these musical paths. And so for me, I actually did not graduate from high school. I thought I was going to be a musician. Ended up realizing very quickly that that path was not for me. What was it about that path that made you realize quickly? So... The deal with my parents was that I could drop out of high school to go to pre-college Juilliard where we both went. And I had to take at least two days worth of college classes at the nearby campus in my hometown.

4:36 And for the first time in my life, I had the freedom to study anything I wanted. And so I was taking classes like women in literature. A class on Nabokov and modern dance and I realized how much I loved the expansiveness of just being able to leaf through a course catalog and get to just imagine all the possibilities and that music as much as I loved it felt narrow and as a bass player and a classical musician there wasn&#39;t a lot of opportunity there for me. So that&#39;s how I ended up. Making that change and I&#39;m glad for it.

5:18 So like about your childhood, growing up, you have an interesting, eclectic diverse multicultural experience. Can you talk a bit more about it? Yeah, so I&#39;m first-generation American. My dad is Tunisian. My mom is Swiss. We grew up moving around quite a bit until the age of 12 and settled in a small town in upstate New York. What was the reason for the moves? I think they were both trying to kind of find their place. All of our family is in Switzerland and Tunisia, but the job opportunity for my dad, who was a college professor was here in the U.S.

5:58 And so I think like a lot of kids who grow up first generation in an immigrant household, there&#39;s the culture you live in at home and then there&#39;s a culture outside of school. So I remember on the first day of kindergarten and showing up and not speaking a word of English and feeling very much like an outsider. My brother was in ESL and English as a second language. He came home from school one day and said to my mom, I&#39;m the dumbest kid in my class. And she said, you&#39;re not dumb, you just don&#39;t know the language yet.

6:36 And so as beautiful and enriching as it was to have this multicultural interfaith household, I think as a little kid, all you want is to be normal. I&#39;m off. You want to fit in. And so it took me a long time to embrace that feeling of being a misfit. But John and I actually met in that town upstate when we were about 12, 13 years old. This is the band camp, right? At the band camp, the infamous band camp. How did you wind up? And camp in upstate New York. Sarah told the spring. That&#39;s up there. Saratoga Springs is not New Orleans, Louisiana.

7:22 I&#39;m telling you. It was... I remember going there and I saw Sue Liker wearing Birkenstocks. That was the first time I saw somebody wearing Birenstocks... I&#39;m a 12-year-old. It was, I was, dang, this is like very granola hippie vibe. Say, I heard about this. I heard this vibe. Interesting. But it was Don McCormick, a family friend of ours. And now it&#39;s just somebody so special in life. But at the time, he was the guy who would come to our high school and scout who&#39;s the next one. New Orleans always produces these great musicians.

8:07 Who&#39;s the young kid that we should look out for? And he came down once, I was in ninth or tenth grade, and he came to the class. And they pointed to me, and I was too afraid to play, because I was very shy as a kid. Even up in the high school, I didn&#39;t like to be. Still, that&#39;s a whole nother conversation. But we&#39;ll get there When we got to the time to play, I said, I, no, I don&#39;t, no. So he couldn&#39;t pick me because he didn&#39;t hear me. Hmm And he went pick somebody else from the class or somebody in the neighborhood.

8:42 And he came back the next summer. He said, nah, I&#39;ve been hearing about you for a year. You got to play. You just got to pay for them. And I played for him. And then I get accepted as camps. The first time I&#39;m leaving home, seeing something for myself without the influence of my parents and my big sister or my cousins or whatever. Right. It was Camp is a deep, this is a veiled advertisement for Bandcamp. You meet your person and you see the world. Pretty girl in Birkenstocks. Man, everybody loves, everybody love to like...

9:22 They from the, from the first, never about to count. But no sparks there, you just met. Well, you all were 12. Yeah, we kids. I was 12, John was 13, 14. Yeah, no sparks. You were too shy, really, to talk to me. Was this band camp, was band camp sleep away? Talk about, were there bunks, were their bathrooms, were you all just carrying around your cellos or did you swim? Were there bathrooms? What do you mean were there bathrooms. But no, a lot of times they don&#39;t, you know, you&#39;ve got an outhouse situation, right?

9:56 Wait, what year is this? I don&#39;t even think this is Was it a camping experience or were you at a school in a college? It&#39;s true. It was sleep away, but we were in the dorms. It was like, they gotta be some... For the instrument. I don&#39;t know. They might have dusted out by the campfire. I don&#39;t know. That&#39;s why I&#39;m trying to get a feel for it. But he kind of was like, she really did graduate from Princeton. She really did. See you around. No, you&#39;re wrong. You&#39;re wrong!

10:24 No, you&#39;re wrong. You&#39;re wrong, Greg. Oh, my goodness. For me, it kind of was like that, though. It was kind of like the boonies. Okay. Well, so there was a jazz camp which John was in, there was an orchestra camp which I went to. Ah, got it. Got it. I got it too. So this was a college camp, not like a sleep away camp. It was a College campus, sleep in the dorms, no outhouses, but I remember John was so shy that I really don&#39;t think we spoke to each other. We met. Was he talking to anybody?

10:59 No. Did you just came? What were you doing? What did you think when you got dropped? Did you get dropped off or were you just given a ticket? You know, I&#39;ve been working in the last, we&#39;ve been talking about this for some years, but I&#39;ve working actively to remember the first 15 years of my life. Hmm Because it&#39;s all a blur. Why is that? I remember certain things, but I think I was doing some processing. Right. Some observing, some processing, checking out what&#39;s happening and trying to understand how to engage with the world and engage with my talents and engage in all the things that it felt like every other week I was evolving into something that I didn&#39;t even quite know where it was going.

11:50 So I was trying to figure that out. But what was yours? So like on the other hand was always Yeah, it was always her, this fabulous specimen here. It&#39;s unbelievable. Just always so eloquent and charismatic. I remember she was going through the woods with the Birkenstocks in the base. On my way to the outhouse. Okay, you guys. It&#39;s not funny anymore. No no no. But what I remember about John, he really was in his own world. But that end of summer recital, John played a solo and it was like the entire audience took in a collective inhale.

12:40 It was you&#39;d been playing piano for a year or two at that point. Not very long, two years. Yeah, when I- started at the Whoa, so what were you what did you have to play in order for him to hear you? Were you playing a different instrument or were you playing just playing the piano? You&#39;ve been playing piano for a year the first time he came, maybe. Yeah, yeah, so I started going to the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, a lot of relatives went there, a lotta the great musicians, jazz particularly.

13:09 So when I started goin&#39; to NOCA, I was about a year into me playing the piano. So by the time I was at the camp, I maybe two years in, I started playing piano, I was 11 or 12 years old, so about 13, 14. I had a Been playing for about a year or two? And uh yeah. Self-taught or sort of family osmosis. Royalty, New York, New Orleans music royalties. They were pretty solid in music. Listen, there was a lot of musicians growing up. There&#39;s a lot. We were hearing, you know, my dad was my first musical mentor, but it was actually my mom.

13:51 She&#39;s just, she has a clairvoyance to her. She has a deeply dedicated, intelligent woman. But I remember when we were kids, she would always come home with a new offering of tutelage for us to partake in. Lessons, tennis lessons, gymnastics, coding. You can go to this chess camp. But you are a piano player. I&#39;m going to take you to these lessons every Saturday morning and if you like it we can continue. How does she know you were a piano player? That was the clairvoyant sticker. That&#39;s it. Got it.

14:29 She saw it. What was it like with your sibling? I mean, Sulika is the older sister, and I&#39;m the younger brother. I was going to say it&#39;s the great gift and burden of being the eldest, that sense of responsibility. But it was definitely a reverse of the dynamic, you know, we went to, at the time, there was corporal punishment in our school. And I remember one time there was a, it was a thing that, something happened in the class where I got caught up in, you, know, there was a class clown who was my best friend, Keon, and Keon was doing, he would dance like Michael Jackson.

15:10 Mm-hmm. Behind the teacher&#39;s back. And he would get to a thing, it would be amazing. But then when the teacher turned around, he would always be back in his seat. Yeah. And he was doing that once, and he got me to get up and do it. Oh. And I did it and we got caught. So then they sent us to another class where they didn&#39;t have a board handy, I guess, for the paddle that we were about to get. So we went to my sister&#39;s class. And she was sitting there, and as soon as she saw me walk, and she was like, what are you doing in my class?

15:45 And then they lined us up, and her teacher gave us the wagon. I was like I knew she was going to go home and say, you&#39;ll never guess what happened at school today. Mm-hmm. Guess who I saw? Guess who? Little Nancy Wilson. Guess who saw? It was you. Yeah. Getting your ass whooped. You&#39;re reported on! So, this is also a thing about younger, older siblings. You didn&#39;t have to talk because other people were talking for you. That may be part of it. I don&#39;t know if you found that, Suleika, with your siblings, you had the poise.

16:35 Did you find that your brother just sort of laid in the cut, as we called it, because Suleikas gonna figure it out and I&#39;ll just observe. This episode is brought to you by Theraflu, makers of fast-acting cold and flu relief. Since 2021, Thera flu&#39;s Rest and Recover Fund has provided more than a million dollars to families to help offset the cost of a sick day. We had IMO listeners share stories about how paid sick time has impacted their lives and wanted to share a few of them with you. Many of our listeners are a part of the sandwich generation.

17:19 Meaning they are responsible for taking care of their kids and also their parents or in-laws. We had one listener share that they have had to take sick time for their own recovery and then also simultaneously care for their grandmother, which made it hard for them to fully rest and get better. I think this is something we both can relate to with caring for our mom and even now for me that my in-law&#39;s are living close by. Yeah, that&#39;s for sure. I mean, but I&#39;d say that we are way more blessed than our mom was because we had resources.

17:58 I think what Theraflu understands, I mean being a part of the sandwich generation when you don&#39;t have the resources and support means something totally different. We saw that with our mom because as many of you know, we lived in our home with our great aunt and great uncle as they aged and our mother. Was in that sandwich position where we saw her caring for our aunt and uncle as they aged while we were still pretty young. And I just remember those times with her being so exhausted, not just physically exhausted, but just exhausted by the worry of all what turned out to be 24 hour care.

18:42 It&#39;s too much for a generation to bear, Um, but thanks to Theraflu. And their work, their support out there. And there&#39;s another listener who shared that she is a single mom who doesn&#39;t have paid sick time. She said that she has no choice, but to work when sick because she can&#39;t afford not to. That&#39;s, that&#39;s for sure. Theraflu knows that resting and recovering when sick can be especially difficult for parents and caregivers who are just responsible for themselves, but also the loved ones they care for. That&#39;s why Thera flu remains committed to continuing to fight for paid sick leave for all Americans because no one should have to choose between their health and their job.

19:30 Learn more or help someone apply for the fund. At theraflu.com slash right to recover. You know, in a weird way, I felt that way on behalf of my whole family. I felt like the translator of this American culture that we were trying to assimilate into, and I felt this maybe outsized sense of responsibility. To get everybody on board as if assimilation was some kind of family project that was going to ensure our safety. So I felt terrible about it now, but my mom would mispronounce a word and I&#39;d immediately correct her or I remember she&#39;s probably the most thoughtful person I know, but she would make us these beautiful lunches and she&#39;d write a little note on the napkin.

20:32 And I&#39;d get to school and I would immediately put it to the side and put it in the trash because I knew I was going to be made fun of for our chicken tajine and couscous or whatever it was that we had for lunch that day. And with my brother, he was so shy. He got bullied a lot in school. I felt really protective of him. So I do think in some ways, yeah, there&#39;s truth to some of the things we associate with birth order. But also the first generation piece of it all, which, you know, as us American kids growing up and Americanized black kids, we had our own assimilation going on.

21:14 But you make a wonderful point that you&#39;re trying to help your parents who don&#39;t know the culture, they don&#39;t speak the language perfectly, and you&#39;re taking on an outsized responsibility to. Make sure that they don&#39;t stumble or fall or get hurt or get made fun of. And you&#39;re just a child yourself in that process. I remember keeping lists of vocabulary words that I would learn at school, like American idioms, and I&#39;d write them down, memorize them, practice them until they sounded somewhat natural in conversation. And I found one the other day and it said.

21:56 Talk to the hand. Oh yeah, that&#39;s a good one. L on forward means loser. And it was like a whole sheet. Wow. Yeah, crib notes. A sheet for myself, exactly. It&#39;s like this talk to the hand, how would you explain that to your mother? Probably yeah yeah. I don&#39;t know if I was explaining it to her, but... And we&#39;ll be like, huh? And you know, the thing I appreciate so much, and we were both raised by such strong women who I think were really unique, to have an example of someone who didn&#39;t really care what other people thought.

22:35 My mom would come and pick us up at the bus stop on cross-country skis, wearing a backwards baseball. You guys were just like, I don&#39;t know her, please never do this again, and now I just think that&#39;s the coolest thing in the world. Serious making it happen. Come on living just enough for the city There ya go! Yes, making it happen. When, for each of you, do you think, as in your youth, did you break out? When did you feel like, I got this, you know, I&#39;m no longer the misfit? Um, right before I met you 12 um I went to the movie theater with my mom and I saw this movie, Julia Roberts, it&#39;s called, um...

23:30 Mona Lisa smile All the girls on the first day of class had already read the textbooks and they were beautiful and fashionable and cool and more than anything they led with their intelligence. And I went home and that was one of those light bulb moments you can have as a little kid and the next day I&#39;d been hanging out with these sort of cool kids in my grade who were in fact now, looking back, not very cool, kind of mixed up in the things. And I walked straight past them in the cafeteria and I went to the library and I found this girl in my class who lived down the block from us, who was top of our class. And I said, can you teach me how to study?

24:15 And I, every day from that point forward during lunch, sat with this new friend and realized, you know, being smart is actually the coolest thing that I can do, maybe not for current me. In the school setting that we were in, but for future me, and that&#39;s gonna be my path forward. Yeah, I remember the way that you, in that time, when we met, felt like the world was open. It just, it was wide open. You could feel that. For me, I love the title of your book because for me it really resonates with coming out of my shell or not.

25:05 Really having one moment but a becoming, a sequence of a thousand decisions that culminate into this moment and then a thousand more from this moment forward to the next moment. And ultimately at the center of it, a strong intention to do something that&#39;s bigger than yourself and the want to be, to create something that is resonant for people in in a way that&#39;s profound and is the... Highest manifestation of your gifts and moving through the world to the point where I remember the years just before I started doing the Late Show, there was some of the best years of freedom and expression and the possibility of what things could be.

25:55 We&#39;d started dating at that time, too. In our early, you know, mid-twenties, there was... There was a period where we felt, you know, we weren&#39;t making no money, but we felt like we were on top of the world. Mm-hmm. And I think that might be the moment, I guess, but there&#39;s no moment I can&#39;t pinpoint. John, in American Symphony, which was a beautiful, beautiful story, the two of you, but you said something that really struck with me and I think I knew what you meant, but I&#39;d love to hear from you.

26:36 You said, music is inevitable. And. That show choked me up, the whole thing. Tell me what you meant by that. Because I think I know what you mean. Well, I should say I know what it means to me. Yes. But I wanna hear what you meant when you said that. There&#39;s a power to what we do. It comes from the divine stream of consciousness, where all creative comes from, and we&#39;re the vessel of the creative, put it out into the world. And when we&#39;re true to that, there&#39;s a purity to that connection, there is a purity to the expression.

27:24 And each note, in the next note, and the next, and next note they come, it&#39;s inevitable, it&#39;s the only thing that could have happened. Because we&#39;ve not tried to change it or manipulate it for personal gain. To commodify it for efficiency and scale, we&#39;ve not tried to lie. When we hear music, that&#39;s why we love it, because it&#39;s inevitable. It feels like life, it feels like divine alignment. And that&#39;s my belief of with the symphony about any music that I partake in, I try to make it tuned into that pure source.

28:11 So they could dealt with a little pushback and redefining yourself. Talk a bit about that transition for you. Yeah, you know, I think when you&#39;re a kid, there&#39;s this notion of a coming-of-age arc, and when you get to the end of that arc, you&#39;ll have answers and certainty about who you and I&#39;m now of the opinion that life is just a series of coming of age arcs. There&#39;s no there, there, where you get to a place and you&#39;re like, this is who I am. This is what I&#39;m doing.

28:50 And if you can surrender to that and enjoy the process of discovery, then it becomes exciting and interesting. So I had a lot of those. When I graduated, I wanted to be a war correspondent. And about a year after graduation. Ended up in the hospital and I was diagnosed with leukemia and I stayed in that hospital that first year. I think I spent about eight months as an inpatient. And those moments where maybe you&#39;ve invested everything into something and it doesn&#39;t pan out for reasons that may or may not be beyond your control can obviously leave you feeling defeated.

29:39 Um, and for me, you know, especially at 22, when you&#39;re watching your friends on social media, starting careers and traveling the world and getting married and all the other big and small milestones of early adulthood, it&#39;s easy to feel like you&#39;re uniquely stuck. Um, that summer I started, um, for the first time in my life, um. Not doing things from a place of self-imposed expectation or thinking about what was practical, but just trying to follow my curiosity to be, as our friend Liz Gilbert says, 1% more curious than afraid.

30:22 And I started keeping a journal in the form of a 100-day project with my friends and family. And I realized in the course of keeping that journal that I was using it, like a reporter&#39;s notebook Um and that while I couldn&#39;t be a work correspondent in the way that I thought. I was reporting from the front lines of my hospital bed. And so that ended up leading to a blog, like the good millennial that I was in 2011 when blogging was all the rage. And that led to my first time ever being published in the form of a weekly column.

31:00 And so, I think for both of us, you know... We&#39;ve been the recipients of great abundance and also great heartbreak and the work of learning to surf those peaks and valleys without letting yourself get stuck in defeat has been our ongoing work. And John&#39;s been such a great inspiration to me. I mean... When we talk about being a misfit, John doesn&#39;t fit into a box. He like explodes the box and then draws a whole different shape for himself. And then he erases that and draws a new one. When did you guys reconnect?

31:51 Now we&#39;re talking. So John was basically doing exactly that when I reconnected with him. I was 16 at that point, it was my first month at Juilliard, and I saw him on the Wintrain. I had no idea that he was at Juiliard. And he was dancing and singing to himself with big old headphones on, and everyone and the subway car was staring at him. Like, what is going on with this guy? You gotta be who you are. And I turned to my friend, Michelle, and I said, I know that guy. That&#39;s John Batiste from Bandcamp.

32:36 And then out of nowhere, I said that&#39;s the man I&#39;m going to marry someday. I have no idea why I said it. Didn&#39;t think of it again. We reconnected. And you hadn&#39;t thought of it prior. And I didn&#39;t think of it after. You didn&#39;t walk out of band camp thinking, ooh, that John, he said not a word. I&#39;ve felt a thing. I got down something with that one. No, you were still in your gloriously awkward phase. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. What was he wearing? I don&#39;t remember what he was wearing that particular. I remember the headphones.

33:14 Were they a color? Were they your Converse sneaker era then? You were trying some things at the time. Oversized suits. Yeah, yeah, had three soups. Three suits, that&#39;s right. I would take drawings to a tailor and they would be like, well, we can&#39;t make this, but we can give you the textiles to make it. So then I would buy the textils and I&#39;ll bring them to a tailer that I could afford to make the stuff. And then they started making suits. So I&#39;ll play shows and I&#39;d take some of the money from the gigs I&#39;d to the tailor and I start making my own clothes. So I start to making my clothes and buying converse that matched the suits.

33:53 What colors were these? Canary yellow. Of course, I knew that... I knew it What did I know? I remember all of them. The one had tails on it. Oh, yeah. It&#39;s like tux tails, straight up tails. Okay. Cloaks cloaks sit. Cloaks. Of course. Don&#39;t sleep on a cloak. No. No, no. Don&#39;t. Sleep. Really. Really cuz I have been sleeping on a close I&#39;m so sorry. Sometimes

34:38 So you&#39;re in the subway with your, did you consider this your subway attire, performance attire? Were you just going to the, you know, the Dwayne&#39;s drugstore in it? You know, it was a performance at times, but it was more than that. It was a form of expressing the identity that we were discovering in the sound, in the look. And it was just how I was when I was walking around in the world. I remember I would go to vintage shops and thrift shops and I would put stuff together. And I started traveling, doing some performances where I discovered some tailors from... Different parts of the world, and they had different textiles and all kinds of stuff you could use. So that opened up a whole other thing, but yeah.

35:31 And what was the sound at the time? Was it your jazz band? Were you, was it straight jazz, old school jazz? Was it... You know, I didn&#39;t have a term for it, so I made a term. I called it Social Music, and the band&#39;s name was Stay Human. Okay yeah. So that was the philosophy. And it was a mix of, the idea of social music was really music. All of the different folkloric traditions of music before music was commodified. And how do you take all of those different traditions, study them, find the different dots that you can connect between them, and bring it into the 21st century?

36:15 So that was my vision. I was lofty. Yeah sure. You still are. That&#39;s what makes you beautiful. You gotta be yourself, you see? So you saw this happening on the subway and you were like, that&#39;s my dude. You know, it was one of those things that you blurt out, don&#39;t know where it comes from, you don&#39;t think of it again. And it wasn&#39;t until our mid-20s that we really started dating. And it was such a beautiful time in our 20s. And I think, you know, your band name, Stay Human, is really an encapsulation of what I love most about you.

36:56 You were just so... Open and just so incredibly creative. I&#39;ll never forget the first time I went to John&#39;s apartment. It was like a sight to behold. There were mantras written on the ceiling and on the walls. I remember above his bed, he had written a list and it said, pray, drink water, phone home, have fun. Um, it was suitcases, looked like an airport terminal because he was, you know, constantly playing shows and on the road and would come home and not unpack and have his next suitcase in Washington Heights.

37:44 Piles of books. First time I had dinner there it started to rain and there was a flood of water coming in through the window and I was like, how long has this been going on for. And he was like, since I moved in and I was like how long ago was that? And he said a couple of years ago. Exactly.

38:10 You were just living in the world of your creativity and your determination to do what your band was called, to stay human and to figure out what that meant. But did he cook dinner that night? He did cook dinner. Build a po- He did. He made red beans and rice. Good evening. You don&#39;t remember any I cooked red beans and rice. Was it, mm, it wasn&#39;t good then. Was it good? It was, um... Here&#39;s your answer.

38:53 He&#39;s the cook of our family. But I wasn&#39;t cooking back then, so it was probably not very good. Yeah. But you were dazzled. I was dazzled and I was totally befuddled by John. He was unlike anyone I&#39;d ever met. And I remember that first week we went to a park and John sat me down and he said, what are your intentions? Which nobody had ever asked me before. And we had this conversation and it was a couple hours long where we talked about. What it was that was important to us, what the terms of the relationship were. Oh, I love it.

39:36 Yeah, just very, no game. Just to get to the point, figure it out. And what was it going through your mind? Did you say Suleika and you call her Suleikha? Why do you say, Sulekha? That&#39;s how I started saying it, and you told me you liked it, so I just... What were you thinking when you saw her again, were you, I like her? See, now I&#39;ll never call you anything else. I was thinking that it felt monumental, felt like that conversation was like a major turning point. How did you guys think about building your lives together?

40:24 Because by then you had been diagnosed. You understood the messiness of it all. How did to in real time negotiate that and how do you continue to negotiate it? I think it&#39;s in the vows, you just decide that when we&#39;re in it, however it needs to be set up, and it&#39;s going to be ever evolving, you know, it&#39;s gonna be a range of different realities that we can&#39;t predict. So let&#39;s exist with the commitment that we made and move however we need to move, knowing that we&#39;re not quitters.

41:09 So you got to know that the person you&#39;re with is not going to quit, and if you know that, then the logistics, you sort that out. Just got to that we&#39;re in this, and that&#39;s my true north, and I think we&#39;ve figured out a few different. There&#39;s an equilibrium to having this illness and not letting it define, giving it only the attention that it deserves. It&#39;s not a defining characteristic of our life. It&#39;s just, that&#39;s here, okay, and we do what we need to do with that.

41:55 But everything else is also here. Yeah. Yeah, I think if anything, you know, the illness is just for us a good reminder. The one certainty that we all share, which is that we are born and we will die, and we are here for a very short period of time. And so I think it&#39;s changed our relationship to time in a way that I&#39;m grateful for and doesn&#39;t feel unique to us or to my illness, but that does change the way we through things. Because yeah when you made a vow, the big shift for me is, yeah there&#39;s no longer that question of am I in or am I out, but if this is the person I&#39;m going to be with, how do I move forward as productively as possible because we are not only sharing our lives together but we&#39;d like to enjoy our lives together.

43:05 And John really early on in our relationship. Had this idea that instead of writing in a journal and doing our individual journaling, we&#39;d write them as letters to each other, which we do, especially when we&#39;re apart, when we are both on the road for work. And it was so interesting because there are things that would come up in these letters that would never come up in the quick phone call where you&#39;re like, how are you? How was your day? Are they letters? Texts, you know, pen to paper, or any form of...

43:41 We&#39;ve done pen to paper on the road where you take a picture of it. Or in person, you know, you&#39;re writing, then we trade books, little journals. But you know that&#39;s letters, it&#39;s the spirit of the letter writing. So I think it has to, you write it with your hand. I it&#39;s a very different thing. It&#39;s not a dictated note.

44:13 But like you said, having the time to the writing part of it, for me, I still write. Everybody asks me, what is it? Should we still go high? I get that all the time. I get it now. And I have to explain and re-explain that going high is about communicating with intention and strategy. That doesn&#39;t mean you don&#39;t feel the emotion, but a lot of times the emotion isn&#39;t the truth. So you exaggerate in the midst of the emotion. You always do this. You never do this, but when you write it down, you start thinking, well, always isn&#39;t actually the right word, right?

44:53 Or you people, you know, that&#39;s not really what I mean, right. It&#39;s how we raise kids, count to 10. Yeah. You know, I mean. Going high is counting to 10, you know, and writing in a relationship is like counting to ten. Give yourself a moment to understand what you really feel and mean and then have that be the source, the beginning of the conversation. Our friend Esther Perel says, what you need to say is not always what they need to hear. And sometimes, like I know for me, I don&#39;t even know what I&#39;m thinking or feeling until I start writing it down.

45:34 And it takes me, you know, a page to get through all the emotions to actually get to the heart of the thing. Well, that gets us also to journaling right? Which is your project, your book. So, Leica, would you talk a little bit about... You&#39;ve produced thus far. Yeah, so I&#39;ve been keeping a journal my whole life. For me, it&#39;s always been this hiding place and seeking place and finding place and just this daily practice that I do. I know you talk about small powers. Uh, just something I do every day. It can be for two minutes, 10 minutes to ground myself, to write my way back to myself.

46:25 But I found that I was kind of getting bored of the sound of my own voice. Um, and so I started to find ways to prompt myself. So this book, the book of alchemy is um a meditation on on the art of journaling and a synthesis of this approach to journaling, and it has 100 essays and prompts. Do you journal? So I don&#39;t journal by the typical definition of journaling. So I started my professional career in investment banking, sales and trading. So I had to keep a diary every day of what I did. So it was really transactional, if you know what I mean.

47:16 And so I never really journaled my feelings about. Craig Robinson. Yeah. And now since my mom passed away, I keep the small little book in my backpack so that when I think of things that remind me of her or the kids do something that I try and remember, I have to write that down. Now I have something I can write it down. I, you know, I&#39;m of the opinion that there are no rules when it comes to journaling, but I know you had a journal that you kept in your 20s during a tumultuous. Yeah, in my teens and twenties, I had a journal, you know, sporadic, Barak was a big, big journal. He has a lot of written journals, but what I did do for the White House years, because I knew that this was a unique time that, and that things were, you always say it&#39;s like we were shot out of a cannon.

48:24 And how do you keep track of all of that? And I just literally did not have the time to put pen to paper, but I knew that I needed to capture what was going on. So what I did do was that I worked with a dear friend of mine, a law school buddy of mine who was a dean at a law School. We were very close. I trusted her, smart woman. She, a friend would come in twice a year. And it was a way for us to catch up and stay in touch while I was first lady. But she agreed to interview me. I need just to say out loud some of the stuff that I was feeling.

49:04 And so she would come in with prompts that were that she had gathered watching me in the news and what was going on. And I always would have her talk to my chief of staff and schedulers just to get sense of what literally it happened over the course of that six month period of time. And then we did a series of interviews that after each one, we got it transcribed. I did not read them over but it&#39;s there for eight years. We collected the stories of emotions and that material became essential when it was to right becoming.

49:46 Vvvv Wow. Because you know how life is, when life is moving so fast, just like you say, you don&#39;t remember any of your teens, right? And a lot of that is because you&#39;ve packed so much life in, and that&#39;s what it was in those eight years. I mean, I would look up and, you know, make a comment like, oh, I&#39;d love to go to Prague. It sounds wonderful. And my chief of staff would say, You&#39;ve been to Prague, I was like, No, I haven&#39;t. You know, I had a discussion with my staff. They were like, you participated in a sit-in.

50:16 At law school. I was like, no, I didn&#39;t. And they were like, No, I think you did. I absolutely have no recollection of taking over the Dean of Students office and sitting in. I said, I would have remembered that until they showed me a picture of me. But I had no recollection. And I didn t want to go through eight years forgetting really major things.

50:51 Well, and I think so many of us are living in a state of overwhelm. Yeah. Well, I think... We&#39;re grateful for this project. And I think this is the best time in the state of the world for people to start journaling. For me right now, the journaling happens through a need to write a speech and to communicate. I find that that&#39;s when I&#39;m putting pen to paper. So I think I&#39;m going to take on one of the challenges. I love it. And see where it goes. As long as Craig commits to do it with me.

51:32 You know what I&#39;m going to commit to do is the listener question. Ha ha ha ha Well we&#39;ve. Yeah okay. We&#39;ll talk about this. We&#39;ll talk about that afterwards. Hahahaha! This question is from Sharon. I&#39;ve lived with multiple sclerosis for 10 years, and I worry about the effect that it has on my family. I have a teen daughter who is so supportive of me, but I also am concerned that her needs might be lost in all of this. I definitely want to prioritize balancing my own health, but also carry the load for my family.&quot; For Michelle and Craig, when you were growing up, how were you affected by your dad&#39;s illness?

52:14 And if you&#39;ve ever been sick, how do you build in self-care? How do you prioritize what you say yes to when it comes to family, work, and everything else in life? How do preserve yourself so that you can feel good about the days you&#39;re having with your loved ones? Sharon from Atlanta. That&#39;s a lot there, Misha, I&#39;ll let you go first. Dad&#39;s illness affect me because I think we&#39;re all individual in the way these things affect us. And I wrote about it in The Light. I think having the father, the center of our household be clearly vulnerable to us, right? Even though he was persistent, defiant strong You know didn&#39;t didn&#39;t really claim it never talked about his illness, you know, cause I think he was probably trying to project a level of certainty and security that maybe he hadn&#39;t come to grips with.

53:16 So we didn&#39;t talk about it a lot, but it was staring us right in, in our faces. You know, our father was different, but there was also a sense of vulnerability that you live with that can make you, um, hold back. But at the same time, I think our parents pushed us out at the same time. I don&#39;t think they wanted us to think of the world by their limits, because I think they were limited from a socioeconomic background. Our parents were working class. They couldn&#39;t go to college because they had to make sacrifices.

53:58 They had to work and earn a living. So their worlds got smaller as a result. And they didn&#39;t want that for us. I think for me, a lot of that is consistent, except I operated from a place of fear. Hmm. I was fearful. I was fear full of vulnerability. I was feel fearful of. Catastrophe happening in the house. I was afraid of fires. I was afraid, I was always afraid. And I think I operated out of fear. So I was successful out of the fear of not being able to provide. And, you know, this is a great question, because I&#39;ve never really addressed addressed it.

54:48 But I was sitting here listening. If you were a journal. Yeah, there we go. Here we go, I know. I know, John, this is the show, man. That&#39;s true. And from that fear, I think my parents saw that in me and the pendulum swung back over. Right, and I think While they did push us to do stuff, they were more successful in pushing you to do more than they pushed me because I was reticent. I didn&#39;t, I was the oldest, I almost didn&#39;t go away to college, and it wasn&#39;t until my dad sort of was like, I&#39;ll be okay, I will be okay because he knew I was always worried about them.

55:45 The second part of the question is, how do you handle your own self-care? For the longest time, I didn&#39;t, because I was fearful that I&#39;d find out that I was going to have some malady. And it wasn&#39;t until I started, it&#39;s like we can laugh at it now, but it wasn&#39;t until I was in my mid-30s and I became a head coach, where we had our own sort of team doctor. That I was like, I got to start my, my wife, Kelly was, you got to start having getting regular physicals. And I was in my late thirties, early forties when I started having physicals every year.

56:26 But now I think having children has made me more cognizant of being. Intentional about my own health in order to stick around for those guys. Right. I relate so much to that. I think, you know, when you&#39;ve had the ceiling cave in on you, you no longer assume structural stability. You&#39;re kind of living on fault lines. And that can make it hard to push yourself out into the world. I know that for me as someone who... Sat both in the caregiver&#39;s chair and who&#39;s right now, you know, going through treatment.

57:16 I just finished five days of chemotherapy right before coming here. I have to actively figure out how to be in relationship with the fear that&#39;s there because it&#39;s there. I&#39;ve tried ignoring it, I&#39;ve try compartmentalizing it, and when I do that, I find it looms even bigger. And to acknowledge it, but not let it be in the driver&#39;s seat. And I&#39;ve had to figure out how to... To allow myself to do things that feel risky, to say yes to the invitation, to make the plan, even if I don&#39;t know I&#39;m going to be well enough to do it, to undertake writing a book that takes two years and you don&#39;t if you&#39;re gonna be able to see it through to prioritize time with friends and family.

58:17 And so I think. For me, one thing I think of a lot is in periods when I&#39;ve been at my sickest and I&#39;ve had maybe only two or three good hours in a day, it&#39;s been a very specific kind of clarifying exercise in that when you only have two or 3 good hours, you get really clear about what you want to do in those two to three. Hours who you want to spend it with and what&#39;s important to you. And right now I&#39;m feeling good, I have lots of energy, but in the morning sometimes I&#39;ll think to myself, if there are only two or three things I could do today, forget my to-do list, what is it that would make this day a really good day?

59:07 And the other thing I do as someone who loves a to- do list, like you. Um, I love a list. I&#39;m the person who at the end of the day, I&#39;ll add things to my to-do list that I&#39;ve already done just so that I can cross them off and feel that sense of satisfaction. Perfection. I start with, in my journal, I&#39;ll start with a to-feel list before I get to my to-do list. And it&#39;s just like, whatever it is, I want to feel rested today. And then I write a couple of ideas of how to get myself there.

59:41 And I actually make whatever that self-care is part of the list and it&#39;s attached to the feeling that it produces, not to the, you know, I have to go to the gym or whatever It&#39;s going to make me grown and want to avoid it.

1:00:00 Yes, as a caregiver, that&#39;s important as well. Caregiving can make you feel the need to, I&#39;m just going to power through, but your body keeps the score. So you know that, well, after a certain point, you realize I have to do something to maintain this role, and you have to make it be something that you&#39;re motivated to do. So finding those. Emotions and not just emotions, but the practice of self-care as same with the craft of making music. I find that there&#39;s a practice to self- care.

1:00:42 You got to go in the woodshed as we say musicians, you got to learn what&#39;s the techniques. And it&#39;s very much a shift in perspective, that you don&#39;t have to Martyr yourself in service of those you love in fact, that&#39;s a disservice to those you love it&#39;s the internal world what&#39;s it feel like in there do we need to renovate Thank you. Do we need a... Maybe we need... Is there a whole bunch of water coming in your window? Maybe so. Might be a, uh, Lil&#39; Leek. Gotta patch that up.

1:01:30 Well, I know I did learn that from watching my parents martyr themselves on both sides, mom and dad. I did work, I think I have worked hard as an adult to find that balance, if only to my daughter&#39;s a different balance. Hmm. Because if I want them to change, I can&#39;t show up like my mom, who it&#39;s like, I&#39;m taking care of everybody and I put myself fifth on my priority list. People are okay, they can do without you. I know they can. And sometimes the best way to care for someone is to model care by caring for yourself.

1:02:16 I think about that all the time with you. It&#39;s not selfish or indulgent to take a moment for yourself. It&#39;s actually a way of giving permission to the other people in your radius to do the same thing for themselves. Are you taking care of your child? Yourself these days. My to-feel list? What&#39;s on my to- feel? I&#39;m in a vibe. I want to be, I want to feel vibey and free. You know, a lot of times we have self-imposed pressure to respond. And that could mean anything. I mean, just to respond, to act, versus to just take a pause and sit with something.

1:03:03 Even if everything is telling you, this has to happen now. Everything is, in fact, totally fine. Yeah So I&#39;m in a very deep, on a cellular level, I&#39;ve gotten to a place of fortitude in the chaos and comfort in taking the time, exactly the time it needs for me to show up as the best version of myself. Yeah yeah. And everything else. I like that. It continues to run, believe it or not. Mm-hmm, feeling the vibe. That&#39;s a perfect vibe to end on. Yes. Yes. We appreciate you guys being here. Man yeah.

1:03:53 It&#39;s been fantastic discussion and. Thank you for making the time for it. This really really means a lot I love you guys. I really, really do. Yeah, we&#39;re grateful to have you in our lives and just to have this beautiful opportunity to have conversation and celebrate your great work, my love. Yes, so proud of you as always. We&#39;re, yeah, it&#39;s such an honor for us to get to have this kind of a conversation. It&#39;s really such a gift. The honor is ours. Well, everyone, the book of alchemy, plus your journal, and I&#39;m getting mine, and I&#39;m going to challenge myself to start a new journal series for myself.

1:04:41 So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing this. And she&#39;s going to bully me into doing this thing. I am definitely gonna, so yeah. Yes. Yes, I like the less. Yeah. Thank you. Maybe you&#39;re doing it to feel this for you because I want to know what you feel I feel like you leaving me alone Just keep it vibin&#39;, keep it vibe, keep it vibes, oh lord!

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "JON BATISTE & SULEIKA JAOUAD on Love, Music, and Caregiving | IMO"?

Michelle Obama (Host), John Batiste (Guest), Suleika Jaouad (Guest).

What is "JON BATISTE & SULEIKA JAOUAD on Love, Music, and Caregiving | IMO" about?

What is mentioned in this Michelle Obama episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including John Batiste, Suleika Jwad, American Symphony, Juilliard, Grammy Award, The Isolation Journals. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "JON BATISTE & SULEIKA JAOUAD on Love, Music, and Caregiving | IMO"?

The episode runs 1 h 6 min; the transcript is about 9,248 words in 89 timestamped sections.

More from Michelle Obama

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 28, 2026.