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The Bidens share how Joe’s persistence and Jill’s leap of faith created a 48-year marriage

Joe asked Jill to marry him 5 times before she agreed.

joe biden, dr. jill biden, meet cute NYC
via Meet Cute NYC/TikTok

President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden share how they fell in love.

The creators of Meet Cute NYC took a 230-mile detour down south and stopped by Washington, DC. to get the story of how the President and First Lady met for a special Valentine’s Day post. The result was a lesson in the critical role that persistence can play in bringing people together.

Meet Cute NYC documents “microportraits of modern love” and features its host, Jeremy Bernstein, asking random people the all-important question: “Excuse me, are you two a couple?”

The video opens with Mr. Biden revealing how he met Jill in 1975 after being set up by his brother. The president lost his wife, Neilia, and 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car crash in 1972, leaving him the single father of 2 boys.

"He called me and said, ‘I go to school with this woman. You will love her, she is beautiful, and she doesn't like politics,'" Mr. Biden said. The First Lady added, ''He called me on a Saturday afternoon, and he said, ‘You know this is Joe Biden, and I said, ‘How did you get my number?’ He said, ‘Would you like to go out tonight?’ I said, ‘I am sorry, I already have a date,’ and he said, ‘Well, would you break it? I am only in for one night.’ So I said ‘Well, call me back in two hours and I will see what I can do.’''

The president asked Dr. Biden to marry him 5 times before she finally agreed. She was rightfully concerned about the responsibility that comes with marrying a widower with 2 children.

''You have to remember, I mean, it wasn't just my heart that was on the line, with Beau and Hunter, I knew that if we were gonna get married, it had to be forever because they had already lost their mother and sister in a car accident and I knew that they couldn't lose someone else in their life. So here we are, it is forever, it is 48 years later,'' Jill Biden said.

The couple was married on wed on June 17, 1977. On January 20, 2021, they became President and First Lady of the United States.

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Gen Z is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents but Denmark has a solution

"Since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents."

Gen Z; Millennials; technology; cell phones; social media; teens and technology; teens social media
Photo credit: Canva

Gen Z is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents. Denmark has the solution.

Nearly every parent hopes their child will be better off than they are: smarter, more secure, and more well-adjusted. Many parents see this as a stamp of successful parenting, but something has changed for children growing up today. While younger generations are known for their empathy, their cognitive capabilities seem to be lagging behind those of previous generations for the first time in history.

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a teacher turned cognitive neuroscientist who focuses on human learning, appeared before Congress to discuss concerns about cognitive development in children. In his address to the members of Congress, he says, "A sad fact that our generation has to face is this: our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. Since we've been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents, and that's exactly what we want. We want sharper kids."

kids, intelligence, sharp kids, generations, education, cognitive abilities Student smiling in a classroom, working on a laptop.Photo credit: Canva

Horvath explains that the reason this happens is that each generation has gone to school longer than the previous generation. Gen Z is no exception to the longer duration of time spent in school, but they're the first ones who aren't meeting this normal increase in cognitive development. According to the cognitive neuroscientist, the decline is due to the introduction of screens in the classroom, which started around 2010.

"Across 80 countries, as Jean was just saying, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly. To the point where kids who use computers about five hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over two-thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school," Horvath reveals.

In most cases, the decline in performance doesn't result in better strategies. The neuroscientist shares that the standardized testing has been adjusted to accommodate lower expectations and shorter attention spans. This is an approach that educators, scientists, and researchers went to Capitol Hill to express wasn't working. But not every country is taking the approach of lowering standards to meet lowered cognitive ability. Denmark went in the opposite direction when it realized their students were slipping behind.

France24 recently interviewed educators in Denmark following their seemingly novel approach to students struggling with cognitive development. Since the beginning of the 2025/2026 school year, Denmark has not only been having students turn in their cellphones, but they've also taken tablets, laptops, and computers out of the classroom. No more digital learning for the majority of the school day. Danes went old school by bringing back physical textbooks, workbooks, and writing assignments. The results have been undeniable. Even the students can't seem to deny the success of the countrywide shift in educational approach.

"I think the biggest issue has been that, because we kind of got rid of the books and started using screens instead, that we've noticed that a lot of the kids have trouble concentrating, so it's pretty easy to swipe with three fingers over to a different screen and have a video game going, for example, in class," Copenhagen English teacher, Islam Dijab tells France24.

Now, instead of computers being part of every lesson, Denmark uses computers very sparingly and with strict supervision. One student says that it has been nice not having screen time at school because she loves to read and write. But it wasn't just the lack of attention span children were developing, they were also developing low self-esteem and poor mental health due to the amount of time spent on devices.

kids, intelligence, sharp kids, generations, education, cognitive abilities Students focused and ready to learn in the classroom.Photo credit: Canva

The data showing the negative impact of screens on teens' brains has prompted a nationwide change in Denmark that extends outside of the classroom. Afterschool activities are eliminating or extremely limiting electronic use. There is also a national No Phone Day that encourages everyone to put away their devices for the day, and Imran Rashid, a physician and digital health expert, is petitioning parliament to ban social media use for children under the age of 15. The no phone movement in Denmark is a nationwide effort that hopes to right the ship before another generation feels the effects.

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In a moving 1994 interview, Robin Williams revealed how he created the iconic 'Mrs. Doubtfire' voice

From a famous chef to a British politician, to the voice that made history.

Robin Williams, Mrs. Doubtfire, 1990s, movies, accents, comedy
diq.wikipedia.org

Robin Williams in 2011.

There was just something about actor and comedian Robin Williams that was equal parts vulnerable and hilarious, and that combo created pure magic. Whether it was on stage, on screen, or simply in an interview, Williams had this rare ability to put people at ease.

Shortly after his 1993 comedy Mrs. Doubtfire was released, Williams gave an interview on Des O'Connor Tonight, a British variety show hosted by comedian and singer Des O'Connor. In the @loveitfilm Instagram clip making the rounds, Williams delightfully explains how he "found" the character's voice.

Clad in a suit and tie, Williams is animated as he explains, "I first started doing the voice (he screams) VERY MUCH LIKE THAT. LIKE JULIA CHILD. AND I REALIZED THAT WOULD SCARE EVEN A HYPERACTIVE CHILD. So I had to kind of tune it down and I got more like Margaret Thatcher on steroids. And then I kind of took a little bit of Bill Forsyth and a little bit of this costume designer who's this wonderful, sweet lady named Merritt and combined them and got this gentle, gentle voice of Mrs. Doubtfire who can still say GET AWAY."

O'Connor affirms Doubtfire's kind nature, agreeing, "She was gentle, wasn't she?" Williams then works his magic, turning the sweet moment into a brilliant joke: "Oh she's nourishing. She could breastfeed an entire football team."

The Instagram page shares a bit of context: "He drew inspiration from Bill Forsyth, who he just finished shooting a film with at the time, and inspiration from the film’s costume designer. He combined her warmth with a comedic edge to create the gentle yet commanding tone of Mrs. Doubtfire."

Robin Williams appears on Des O'Connor Tonight in 1994. www.youtube.com, Des O'Connor Tonight

Williams was brilliant throughout the entire interview. O'Connor, who announces Williams had just gotten a Golden Globe for the character, seems genuinely excited to introduce him. Williams comes dancing out, revealing his very high-waisted black pants. O'Connor offers him tea, to which Williams jokes, "I love that. A little tea and Prozac makes the day go by so quick." He adds, his mind quickly firing, "And some sugar. A little Betty Ford speedball, great!"

From there, the jokes simply never stop. They begin discussing Mrs. Doubtfire, and Williams kids that he had a bikini wax for the role, which was "totally unnecessary." When the topic of the accent comes up, Williams explains, "It's kind of Glaswegian (Scottish) because I just finished working with Bill Forsyth for four months." (The film he's referring to is Being Human, which co-starred Ewan McGregor in his first ever role.)

As they go on, Williams doesn't let up. He makes dinosaur and A Chorus Line jokes all in one sentence, keeping the audience on their toes.

The topic of the 1994 Northridge earthquake comes up, and, in typical Williams style, he gets beautifully serious. "If there's any good side to earthquakes, it's that people suddenly drop all the, you know, 'where's my fax machine,' and suddenly simple things—I mean like water, air—and people start to take care of each other. I mean it really happened in San Francisco. Crime goes down. I think crime in L.A. went down 80 percent."

Williams then jokes, "I think it's because they can't find their ammunition. But people start to forget about everything else and you're forced back to the bottom line of taking care of each other. It happens. And then people start to realize, 'You're my neighbor. I've been hooked up to the cable for four years.'"

He then plugs Comic Relief, a non-profit charity fundraiser he co-hosted with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal to raise money for the homeless epidemic.

Robin Williams does standup for Comic Relief. www.youtube.com, A Blast from the Past

Comments from across social media are reminders of how much Williams was loved. One adoringly shares, "I love that the interview gave him a chance to remind people he was a humanitarian. He actually cared for people. Such a wonderful man. He brought so much positivity to the world."

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Helicopters dump 6,000 logs into rivers in the Pacific Northwest, fixing a decades-old mistake

Forty years ago, restoration workers thought logs were the problem. They were wrong.

river restoration, washington, river fish, restoration, Yakama Nation, indigenous land, indigenoues tribes, salmon, trout, pacific northwest
Photo credit: Canva

Restoration workers now see how "critical" wood is to the natural habitat.

For decades, river restoration in the Northwestern United States followed a simple rule: if you saw logs in the water, take them out. Clean streams were seen as healthy streams, fast-moving water was seen as optimal, and wood was treated like a "barrier" to natural processes, particularly those of the local fish.

Now, helicopters are flying thousands of tree trunks back into rivers to undo that thinking.

In central Washington, one of the largest river restoration efforts ever attempted in the region is underway. More than 6,000 logs are being placed along roughly 38 kilometers, or 24 miles, of rivers and streams across the Yakama Reservation and surrounding ceded lands.

Nearly 40 years ago, Scott Nicolai was doing the opposite kind of work, all in the name of restoration.

"(Back then) the fish heads — what I call the fisheries folks — we stood on the banks, and we looked at the stream," Nicolai, a Yakama Nation habitat biologist, told Oregon Public Broadcasting. "If we saw a big log jam, we thought, 'Oh, that's a barrier to fish. We want the stream to flow.'"

river restoration, washington, river fish, restoration, Yakama Nation, indigenous land, indigenoues tribes, salmon, trout, pacific northwest Fish find shelter for spawning in the nooks and crannies of wood. Photo credit: Canva

At the time, logs were removed in an effort to simplify the habitat. However, it soon became clear that wood provided vital "complexity," creating sheltered pockets for salmon and bull trout to spawn and supporting algae that feed aquatic insects. Logs also slow water, spread it across floodplains, and allow it to soak into the groundwater. That water is then slowly released back into streams, helping keep them flowing and cooler during hot, dry periods.

The consequences of removing this "critical part of the system" (in addition to overgrazing, railroad construction, and splash dam logging) were made all too clear over the years as the rivers dried up and wildlife populations declined.

"We're trying to learn from our mistakes and find a better way to manage," said Phil Rigdon, director of the Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources.

That's why Nicolai is now helping lead a project for the Yakama Nation aimed at rebuilding river complexity by returning logs to their rightful place. Many of these streams are now unreachable by road, which is why helicopters are used. Logs are flown from staging areas and carefully placed at precise drop locations marked with pink and blue flagging tape.

river restoration, washington, river fish, restoration, Yakama Nation, indigenous land, indigenoues tribes, salmon, trout, pacific northwest Many of these streams are now unreachable by road, which is why helicopters are used.Photo credit: Canva

The wood comes from forest-thinning projects led by The Nature Conservancy and includes species such as Douglas fir, grand fir, and cedar. Although some of the timber could have been sold, it is instead being used as river infrastructure.

For tribal leaders, the work carries even deeper meaning. During the helicopter flights, they gathered along the Little Naches River for a ceremony and prayer.

river restoration, washington, river fish, restoration, Yakama Nation, indigenous land, indigenoues tribes, salmon, trout, pacific northwest Tribal leaders gathered by the Little Naches River for a ceremony and prayer.Photo credit: Canva

"It was very simple: to bring what was rightfully part of this land back to us," said former tribal chairman Jerry Meninick.

The aftermath of the original restoration project illustrates how human concepts, such as the belief in the superiority of "cleanliness," can be limited and sometimes cause more harm than good. The miracle of nature, however, is that when left to her own devices, she can heal herself.

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Zen monk explains why cleaning is 1,000 times more powerful than meditation

The order in which you clean has a spiritual tie-in, he says.

buddhist monk, zen monk, meditation, cleaning, zen temple
SOKO Zen Monk/YouTube

Some monks spend much of their day cleaning.

While some people genuinely love to clean, many of us find it a necessary chore we don't particularly enjoy. We want the end result, but the process leaves much to be desired. If we could afford to hire someone to do all of our cleaning for us, we would.

A Zen monk might make us rethink that mindset. Soko, a Zen priest and spiritual director, says that not only is cleaning an effective spiritual practice, but it's actually 1000x more effective than sitting and meditating. Pretty strong words from someone who has dedicated a big portion of their daily life to meditation, no?

Soko explains that life in the temple is very simple: They eat, they clean, and they meditate. That's basically it, but it's purposeful.

"The idea is that when we're doing whatever we're doing, we are fully engaged," he says. "We are bringing everything we have, all of our concentration and attention to that thing. We're not in the past worrying about something that we regret or thinking about what we need to do in the future." In fact, they don't even know what the next day's tasks will be for that reason.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Soko shares that Hakuin Zenji, a Japanese Zen master, said that moving meditation is a thousand times more powerful than sitting meditation. He also says they always start cleaning the inside of the building first before moving outdoors to tidy up the outside.

"You could say that this maybe correlates a little bit to the work we need to do spiritually, too," says Soko. "You know, before we can kind of clean up the mess of our lives outwardly, we've kind of got to look within first and do the inner work."

What does that inner work entail? "Work is getting to know yourself and know the parts that you really maybe are uncomfortable with that you don't want to look at and the parts you are quite happy with, knowing the full range. And a way to do that is through meditation or deep spiritual contemplation."

zen buddhism, monk, meditate, meditation, buddhist Sitting meditation has its benefits, but moving meditation is particularly powerful.Photo credit: Canva

He explains that the cleaning the monks do in the temple helps cleanse the inner self.

"Doing these kind of simple tasks in the monastery, like exhausting yourself through a rigorous schedule cleaning, and doing it in difficult ways that makes your body ache and tired, is kind of like a cleansing of this gook that's been calcified around your inner being through the years of your life. And so slowly, step by step, you know, sweeping away or washing off this unnecessary or not necessarily unnecessary, but you know, this accumulated gook so that you can get to and see clearly who you are and what's going on inside."

Well, that kind of changes what it means to clean, doesn't it?

Shoukei Matsumoto is another monk who wrote a whole book on this concept called A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind. He shared that, in Japanese schools, it is normal for students to clean their own classrooms, and even corporate leaders incorporate cleaning into regular business practice. Monks, he said, spend more time cleaning than meditating.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

"When talking about the inner peace or mindfulness, people usually think of meditation, but I don't think that it is only about meditation. Every aspect of our daily life can become Zen and among these there is soji. Soji means cleaning in Japanese but as a Buddhist monk, soji for me is not just about the physical act of cleaning. It's meditation in motion, just like other actions such as cooking or driving, you might end up moving on autopilot and increase your concentration level. Soji can become a tool to cleanse your mind from anxieties and become an opportunity for reflection. It's easier to approach compared to traditional meditation and something you are already doing in your daily life."

A woman who goes by The Minimal Mom on YouTube tried out A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind and shared her experience in a video. But what's great about her take on it is that she also incorporated some of the most recent research, combining the spiritual with the scientific:

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Perhaps if those of us who don't love cleaning can see it as more of a spiritual practice than a physical one, it won't seem like just another chore to do.

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Mastering the simple '90-10 rule' can make a hard life feel a lot more joyous

You have more control over how you feel than you think.

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via Canva/Photos

A woman is both happy and angry.

In the field of human psychology, there is a popular concept known as the illusion of control, which states that people believe they have greater control over the events in their lives than they do. If you think about it, a lot of our lives are controlled by chance, whether it's our genetics, the families we were born into, the time and place where we were born, and chance encounters that change the trajectory of our lives, such as the moment we met our spouse or someone with a job opportunity.

People who have it good are more likely to attribute their good fortunes to their effort, while those who are having difficulty getting by are more likely to blame bad luck. No matter how we delude ourselves, one thing is certain: many situations we find ourselves in throughout life are out of our control, and our real power lies in our ability to react.

Knowing how to react to situations beyond our control is the crux of the 90-10 rule.

What is the 90-10 rule?

The 90-10 rule, attributed to Stephen Covey in the bestseller “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” states that 10% of life is made up of what happens to you, and 90% is decided by how you react.

People often explain the 90-10 rule by sharing a story of a mishap at breakfast.

You are having breakfast in business attire, and your young daughter spills coffee on your shirt. You reprimand her and your spouse for putting the cup of coffee too close to the table's ledge. Your daughter gets upset and misses her school bus. So you have to drive her to school, and because you’re speeding, you get a $180 ticket. You arrive at work late, and the day spirals from there. When you get home from work, you have an annoyed wife and child.

Why did you have a bad day?

A) Did the coffee cause it?

B) Did your daughter cause it?

C) Did the policeman cause it?

D) Did you cause it?

The answer is "D".

In an alternative universe, the coffee spills on your shirt, and you forgive your daughter. You change your shirt, your daughter makes the bus, and you get to work five minutes early. Now, instead of having a day that spiraled out of control, taking a moment to see the spilled coffee as an accident changed the entire day.

What happens when people skillfully respond to events out of their control over a long period? Their lives will be completely different than if they chose to take things out of their control personally.

Here are 3 ways to apply the 90-10 rule.

The key is not to take minor inconveniences personally.

1. If someone says something negative about you, do not be a sponge. Let the attack roll off like water off a duck's back. You do not have to let the negative comments affect you.

2. If someone cuts you off in traffic, don’t take it personally; who cares if you get to work 10 seconds later? There's no point in letting it ruin your day.

3. If you get to the airport and find out your flight is delayed, don’t get mad at the person working at the ticket counter. It’s beyond their control. The plane will arrive at some point, whether you get worked up or not.

airport, airplane, happy man airport, luggage, flights, A man walking through the airport.via Canva/Photos

The 90-10 rule mirrors the "Let them" theory championed by Mel Robbins, a podcast host, author, motivational speaker, and former lawyer. The first thing is to acknowledge that others are imperfect and that you cannot change them. “People can only meet you as deeply as they've met themselves. Most people haven't gone to therapy, they haven't looked at their issues, and frankly, they don't want to. Let them. Let your parents be less than what you deserved," Robbins said in a viral video. "Let your family life be something that isn't a fairy tale. Try to remind yourself that they're just doing the best they can with the resources and the life experiences they have."

Remember, you can’t control everything, but you can choose how you react to minor annoyances. Choose to respond in a skillful, thoughtful manner without taking things seriously, and you can quickly get past the minor annoyances without causing the adverse ripple effect that can ruin your entire day.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.



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