Joe Biden has been involved in US politics for more than fifty years, becoming one of America’s youngest senators in 1972, when Richard Nixon was in the White House. Now, aged eighty, Biden is the oldest US president in history and is seeking re-election in 2024.

He’s experienced terrible tragedies in his life, when his first wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident in 1972, and the death from cancer of his elder son, Beau, in 2015.

Yet he bounced back, serving two terms as vice president under Barack Obama, and finally making it to President in 2021. As he makes another run at the White House, Mark Coles charts his life from the blue-collar town of Scranton, Philadelphia to Washington DC and hears how family plays a very important role in his life.

Presenter: Mark Coles
Production team: Diane Richardson, Alix Pickles, Sabine Schereck, Sally Abrahams
Sound: Rod Farquhar
Editor: Richard Vadon