Kisha Smith
Since leaving the White House, Michelle Obama has written two bestselling books—Becoming (2018) and The Light We Carry (2022)— and sold out speaking engagements across the country to promote them, but this month for all those who can’t get enough of her wisdom and wit, the former first lady has debuted “Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast”.
Airing weekly, the podcast will feature some of the conversations Obama held with her famous friends—Tyler Perry, Oprah Winfrey, Conan O’Brien, Gayle King, David Letterman, Hoda Kotb and Ellen DeGeneres among them—that those who weren’t part of the fortunate few to attend the sessions did not get to hear.
In the premiere episode, Obama shared her emotional feelings at Trump’s inauguration while also addressing the poor turnout.
“After the inauguration – and we know who’s inauguration we were at – that day was so emotional on so many different reasons. We were leaving the home we had been in for eight years, the only home our kids really knew. They remembered Chicago but they had spent more time in the White House than anywhere, so we were saying goodbye to the staff and all the people who helped to raise them. There were tears.
“Then to sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display, there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage, there was no reflection of the broader sense of America and many people took pictures of me and they were like, ‘You weren’t in a good mood.’ No, I was not. But you had to hold it together like you do for eight years and then you walk through the Capitol, you wave goodbye, you get on Marine One and you take your last flight off flying over the Capitol where there weren’t that many people there. We saw it. By the way. And then we went to Andrews Air Force Base, said goodbye to the military, got on Air Force One and when those doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight, uncontrollable sobbing because that’s how much we were holding it together for eight years.”
The podcast—which promises personal stories and insights listeners won’t encounter anywhere else—is the first original project in the newly formed exclusive, worldwide, multi-project, multi-year first-look production deal between Audible and Higher Ground, the company founded by the to tell powerful stories that entertain, inform, and inspire.