Transcript

ANDERSON COOPER Opens Up on His Journey with Loss & Grief | IMO

From Michelle Obama · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 21 min · 14,516 words · 125 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "ANDERSON COOPER Opens Up on His Journey with Loss & Grief | IMO", an episode of Michelle Obama published December 10, 2025 (1 h 21 min, about 14,516 words). It mentions 52 people, works and ideas, including Vanderbilts, Families, CeraVe, IMO, Grand Central Station.

What this episode is about

Anderson Cooper reflects on his childhood experiences with loss and grief, drawing connections from his family history to his understanding of mortality, using a visit to a statue of Commodore Vanderbilt as a poignant metaphor for how people are remembered after they pass away. The discussion also touches on family dynamics and shared moments, highlighting how personal connections and everyday experiences shape one's perspective on life and loss.

Key takeaways

  • Vanderbilt's statue? His ego was so big, even he had to immortalize himself.
  • Grandparents as statues capture the eternal 'do as I say, not as I do' spirit.
  • Kelly's emails: the ultimate TL;DR saga, but she's a fiscal hero with that rental car hack.
  • Boiling eggs: the fine line between culinary mastery and breakfast existential crisis.
  • Anderson Cooper: proof that even amid personal loss, storytelling remains his unwavering north star.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Nothing Left Unsaid, All There Is, Anderson Cooper 360, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt
  2. – 20:00: Families, mortality, The Rainbow Comes and Goes, trial of the century
  3. – 30:00: Families, Duke's Happy Holiday, Georgetown, South Carolina, Mississippi Public Radio
  4. – 40:00: Families, Francis Weller
  5. – 50:00: MasterClass, masterclass.com/slash IMO pod, Steph Curry
  6. – 1:00:00: Vanderbilts, Coopers, Andy Cohen, Citizen Kane
  7. – 1:10:00: Astor riots, Families, Find Your Roots, Miss Critz
  8. – 1:20:00: Glioblastomas
  9. – 1:21:23: Joe Frazier, Marion

Notable quotes from "ANDERSON COOPER Opens Up on His Journey with Loss & Grief | IMO"

  • The only connection to the Vanderbilts I had w as a kid, my dad once took me to Grand Central Station, which was founded by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who is not a nice guy.
    about Vanderbilts · at
  • Our fourth is here and Kelly Robinson.
    about Kelly Robinson · at
  • Yes, Anderson Cooper, who is the anchor of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, host of The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper and the popular grief focused podcast, All There Is.
    about Anderson Cooper 360 · at
  • Glad though I was able to put together this documentary for HBO called Nothing Left Unsaid.
    about Nothing Left Unsaid · at
  • We ended up trip making into a book called Nothing Left The Rainbow Comes and Goes, and then we made this documentary called Nothing Left Unsaid, and it was really important to me that.
    about The Rainbow Comes and Goes · at
  • Yeah. My dad wrote a book, about two years before he died called Families and it was a memoir about he grew up he grew up kind of poor in Mississippi on a farm during the depression and it was about the life of.
    about Families · at
  • Basketball, I'm still trying to get better. So when I saw Steph Curry's class on Masterclass, I had to check it out.
    about MasterClass · at
  • Year old, lizard brain looked at like the poor Coopers, farmers as the family you wanted.
    about Coopers · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Nora — Person · 2 mentions
  • Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Once took me to Grand Central Station, which was founded by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who is not a nice guy.
  • Kelly Robinson — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Gloria Vanderbilt — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. My mom was Gloria Vanderbilt.
  • Wordsworth — Person · 1 mention · first at
    The course of the year was The Rainbow Comes and Goes, which is from a Wordsworth poem.
  • Francis Weller — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Absolutely. And rituals are so important. Which I had never really thought about Francis Weller's who this writer I mentioned, he's a he does grief rituals. And he did a small ritual of for it was about 200 people in this room.
  • Steph Curry — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Even after years of coaching basketball, I'm still trying to get better. So when I saw Steph Curry's class on Masterclass, I had to check it out.
  • Andy Cohen — Person · 1 mention · first at
    But I know my Andy Cohen makes fun of me.
  • Miss Critz — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Natural History with my, I don't know, it was my first grade class, Miss Critz was the teacher.
  • Skip Gates — Person · 1 mention · first at
    But it did make me and knowing my dad's history and I did the Skip Gates follow your, find your roots show, which was incredible.
  • Joe Frazier — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's like I'm honoring Marion and Frazier by showing up every day in a way that would honor them.
  • Marion — Person · 1 mention · first at
    It's like I'm honoring Marion and Frazier by showing up every day in a way that would honor them.

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • CeraVe — Company · 3 mentions
  • IMO — Company · 3 mentions
  • MasterClass — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Mississippi Public TV — Company · 1 mention · first at
    About maybe two months ago got an email from somebody from Mississippi Public TV.
  • Mississippi Public Radio — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Because I have no recordings of him or anything. I had no moving images of him. And a lady from Mississippi Public Radio, an archivist, found an old TV interview my dad gave promoting this book, and she sent it to me.
  • Find Your Roots — Company · 1 mention · first at
    And knowing my dad's history and I did the Skip Gates follow your, find your roots show, which was incredible.
  • FirstDibs — Company · 1 mention
  • Rivian.com — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Nothing Left Unsaid — Product · 2 mentions · first at
  • CeraVe Intensive Moisturizing Cream — Product · 2 mentions
  • IMO — Product · 2 mentions
  • Anderson Cooper 360 — Product · 1 mention · first at
  • The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Is the anchor of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, host of The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper and the popular grief focused podcast, All There Is with Anderson Cooper.
  • All There Is — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Anderson Cooper and the popular grief focused podcast, All There Is with Anderson Cooper.
  • Sixty Minutes — Product · 1 mention · first at
    He is also a regular correspondent for CBS's Sixty Minutes, which is on in the Robinson household every Sunday, right before we watch the evening football game. And he's the New York Times.
  • Buick Electra 225 — Product · 1 mention
  • R1S — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

  • Vanderbilts — Concept · 5 mentions · first at
  • Coopers — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
  • trial of the century — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Of a vicious custody battle when she was 10 years old. It was called the trial of the century in the depression.
  • mortality — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    I think I talk about death and mortality probably more with my kids.
  • Astor riots — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    There's the Starbucks near my house that was the a site of the Astor riots, when th there were t competing groups in New York rioting over two competing opera houses in lower Manhattan, which.
  • Glioblastomas — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Inherently I was talking to a woman, Mary, who's whose son died of glioblastoma, and I talked to her every couple of weeks.
  • 2023 — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

  • Grand Central Station — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    The only connection to the Vanderbilts I had w as a kid, my dad once took me to Grand Central Station, which was founded by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who is not a nice guy.
  • Duke's Happy Holiday — Place · 1 mention · first at
    We went to Duke's Happy Holiday New York in White Cloud, Michigan.
  • White Cloud, Michigan — Place · 1 mention · first at
    We went to Duke's Happy Holiday New York in White Cloud, Michigan.
  • Georgetown, South Carolina — Place · 1 mention · first at
    To visit our grandparents in Georgetown, South Carolina.
  • Euclid — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Because she was at a point when she was still alive, still living on Euclid, where she was Come on over.
  • Museum of Natural History — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Yes. Yeah. Of course, then like a month later, I went to the Museum of Natural History with my, I don't know, it was my first grade class, Miss Critz was the teacher.
  • I-95 — Place · 1 mention

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

The only connection to the Vanderbilts I had w as a kid, my dad once took me to Grand Central Station, which was founded by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who is not a nice guy. Mm-hmm. And there's a statue of him outside Grand Central Station, which by the way he paid for and had made and set up there. No, it wasn't like his workers loved him and he did it. Like it was his. And he made photographs. He he had paintings painted of himself and gave them out to all his children, not that they wanted them either. But but I remember my dad taking me to see this statue when I was like six, and the only thing I took away from it was that grandparents turned into statues when they die, which is very relatable. I know everybody feels this. Oh yeah.

This episode is brought to you by Rivian. Meesh. Hi, Craig Robinson. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. How are you? Fine. I'm having such a good time out here in LA. Yeah. So you've got some company with you this this trip. So this trip, Aaron, our youngest Mm-hmm. Our fourth is here and and Kelly Robinson. Kelly. Made a Yes yes. Go ahead and give it up for her. She made an appearance So be here. Kelly in the house. K Kelly's known to the whole staff only by her emails. Yeah, Kelly's emails are infamous. Kelly woo g I can count this is my what I love about my sister in law. Details, you know?

There is no detail, which is why I don't communicate with you. No, you have no information. You give not if I want to know what's going on, I'm like, excuse me Kelly. Tell me what's happening in your life and I will get the rundown. Right. They will. They will. Your wife is like, I t I tell her you she's, you know, I'd hire her in a minute as a chief of state to run anything, any office, any project. She, you know, she's Well you'll love this because you know, we we Aaron and I have been staying in our Airbnb, which has been terrific.

Have a normal life while you're away. We cook breakfast this morning. So We as in Karen and I. Oh. Darren and I. So we boiled eggs last night. See that you know, it's all y he says he cooking breakfast. Like everybody here knows. I breakfast and it he boiled some eggs. Okay. We we had to fix some other things to go with the eggs. And don't say to don't say toast and fruit. Toast and fruit and Aaron made himself waffles. Oh now that's Frozen. Oh well. In the toaster. Okay. All right. Well You know, we're two bachelors.

We're two bachelors. Two bachelor's living life in your Airbnb. We're living life and so we have Did you have to rent a car this time? W no, no. Well we we haven't but Kelly of course rented a car because she figured out that that was cheaper than taking Ubers. So And that's the other thing about Kelly. Not a penny wasted. Not a penny. It's like, yeah. She she knows the cost of Uber. She's probably she's calculated priced out all the Uber trips that were are gonna be taken in this trip and decided we're renting. Yes. We're renting a car.

Yeah. It's better. Yeah, yeah. But if if we could rent a car that we wanted, I'd I would have rented a Rivian. You know, they're they're sleek and clean. And Kelly's just now starting to drive the Rivian. Are you now is she Kelly's Kelly's getting in on the Rivian action? Yeah, our our listeners as they know, Rivian gifted both of us r cars this this past year and we've had fun driving them. Well, we've got a great great show, great guest. Yes someone who so many of us know. He's been in our living rooms, for good or bad.

Yeah. For for most of our our lives doing the hard work of telling us what's going on in the world. Anderson Cooper is with us today. Yes. Yes, Anderson Cooper, who is the anchor of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, host of The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper Cooper and the popular grief focused podcast, All There Is with Anderson Cooper. And I'm really interested to talk to him about that. Yeah. He is also a regular correspondent for CBS's Sixty Minutes, which is on in the Robinson household every Sunday, right before we watch the evening football game. And he's the New York Times bestseller. So without further ado, Anderson, come on out.

Anderson Cooper. How are you, sir? Welcome to IMO. Thank you for being here. Welcome to IMO. Great to see you. Thank you. We're kinda dressed the same colors. I'm not sure. I know you all says about me given your fashion sense. But I it's a little alarming actually. That's good. You guys look cute. This is very Close. Very close. Yes. But I like your style. Nobody has ever said that to me. No it said no one ever. Well it it's it's it's great to have you just saying you've you've spent some time with my husband over the years, but Little bit, yeah. I I actually saw you I did an interview with your husband in Ghana.

Mm-hmm. And you were there, I think, with your kids at the the last door. Yeah. That enslaved people would go to before the first term. Yeah. Yeah. It was incredible. Okay. It was an incredible experience. Powerful experience. Yeah. But you've you have you've been busy in the meantime. Yeah, you know. Been it's been it's been a little busy. Well let's get right down to it. Why would you do a grief podcast? You know, it started. I my mom died in 2019, she was 95, and I she was the last person left from my family. My my brother had died by suicide when I was 21.

He killed himself in front of my mom, and my dad had died when I was 10 of a heart heart attack. And so grief had had, I mean, I'd kind of known loss early on, but so my mom was the last, and and I was kind of ex, you know, I was prepared for it. She lived an extraordinary life and and we were very close. But I suddenly found myself going through all the things that she had left behind, which is a process all of us will go through at some time in our life, unfortunately. And turned out to be also all my dad's things and all my brother's things, which my mom could never go through.

She could never bring herself. So I found it to be such a lonely and overwhelming experience of I didn't know I mean, I know I hadn't heard people talk about it. I obviously knew it as an intellectual concept. This is something that that does it happens, but my mom saved everything. And and I just the way I deal with things is I tend to kind of narrate them from a distance in my head. And I just started recording stuff on my phone. And then I thought it's weird that there's not more stuff out there about this process that is so universal.

And I I I'd never actually, I mean, I'd only listen to one podcast. I wasn't a big podcast listener, didn't really know what I was doing, but I just started. Talking to people 'cause I needed help and figuring out how how do you how do you do this and and it's been an extraordinary evolution since then. I I yeah, it's been amazing. Wow. Wow. Well, you've had a a pretty interesting ch childhood. I d just recently watched a documentary about your family. Yeah. Yeah. She was an amazing She was cool. She was cool. Yeah. My mom was Gloria Vanderbilt.

And she was kind of in some ways larger than life. And but she lived this extraordinary life of very early loss and this kind of crazy childhood she had and never really feeling she felt like a changeling most of her life. And and we yeah, so I I was very glad though I I was able to put together this documentary for HBO called Nothing Left Unsaid. And and for me it was really important that I felt like with my brother and my dad, there was so much left unsaid because I was so young when they died. And when my mom, actually, when my mom reached the age of 91, she wrote me this really funny text about being 91 and yet feeling like 17.

And I it just kind of made clicked in my head of like, you know, I I want to engage with her in a real conversation for the next year of her life. And, you know, because I think so often we we know our parents as our parent, we don't necessarily know them as a human being. And it's only afterward, we kind of realize wow, there's all this stuff we don't know about them. So I asked my mom if she would like have this intentional conversation with me for a year, which she was thrilled about because it meant I would be talking to her a lot. And we did it over email and and phone, and we ended up trip making into a book called Nothing Left The Rainbow Comes and Goes, and then we made this documentary called Nothing Left Unsaid, and and it was really important to me that.

When she died, she knew me and I knew her and there was nothing left unsaid between us. There was no you know, there were no secrets, there were no things. Oh, I wish I had said that. It it we had said it all and it was really it was extraordinary. And Wait, wha what was the the thing that you found out about your mom as a human being that surprised you the most? I mean I had known I mean, I had known I mean, as a kid, I was very concerned about stability. And my mom w my mom was an amazing person, but she was not very parental. And my dad had died, and I very much wanted to know what was happening.

And I used to read my mom's journal. I used to monitor her phone calls when I was a kid. Like I wanted to know what was coming down the pike. Yeah. And I started working when I was twelve to earn money 'cause I was very concerned about like my mom's on shaky financial footing and even though the world probably thought she was super rich, but Yeah. She, you know, spent a lot of money and had no sense of money. And I knew this from a little kid. And I remember I was actually walking up the stairs one day and my mom was on the phone and she said to talking to somebody on the phone.

She said, Well, I'll always be able to make money. And I stopped and I was like, This ship is going down. This I'm like, if she thinks she's always gonna be able to do this, like And h how old were you when you heard that? I was like twelve. So you knew Yeah, I knew. I knew early on. Are you the oldest? No, I was the I was the youngest. My brother was two years older. And but he wasn't as like focused on this as much as I was. I was really determined. And yeah, I started, I mean, it was ridiculous. I started working as a child model at 12 to like to help help the family.

Well, I mean, not that they, you know, I wasn't I was saving the money because I was like, I'm gonna need to I'm gonna I'm building a life raft here. But but she was remarkable. And and you know, I was always very sympathetic to my mom because she really didn't have parents of her own. She was kind of her dad died when she was an infant. She was raised in hotels in Europe by her mom who just wanted to party. She was the subject of a of a vicious custody battle when she was 10 years old. It was called the trial of the century in the depression.

And you know, I kind of saw a sadness behind my mom's eyes her whole life. And I I didn't understand what the sadness was from, but I was sympathetic to her. And so even if she wasn't the most kind of mom mom, she she was incre I I viewed her as I mean I from the time I was little, I viewed her as like a a space alien whose rocket ship had c had like you know failed and landed here on Earth by accident. And it was my job to like help her like rent an apartment and learn how to breathe oxygen. Yeah. That's that's a level of worry that most young people Yeah, but look who's talking.

I knew you were worried. I I listened to you and I think about him. Really and he's the oldest. I think you called it catastrophic. You know, he was a catastrophe. At that age in the same way that you were, you know, really thinking, okay, all the worst possible scenarios. And I think he felt like the one that had to know it all. Right. He was gonna be you. That's interesting. Like if things fell apart, if our dad ever could n never function. Then Craig was the one who was gonna make sure. It's interesting, because the the title of this book my mom and I wrote together, which ended up being basically our correspondence over the course of the year was The Rainbow Comes and Goes, which is from a Wordsworth poem.

And it was a poem my mom liked. And for her, it meant, Well, the rainbow comes and goes. It's always gonna come back. And so like bright days are just ahead, they're just around the corner, the phone can ring and your whole life can change. And for me, the title was like, Yeah, the rainbow comes and it goes. Right and And yeah, the phone can ring and your whole friggin' life can change. Like I saw it from a negative lens. And she saw it. She like could not it was so such an interesting kind of different ways to be realistic.

You're just trying to be realistic. Just cover all the bases in case something happens. It's a fine line between realistic and pessimistic. I think that's right. But I think I think you two fell on the pessimistic side. Somewhere in the Isttic family, but Do you think that your mom did she know that you were kind of the the backup child? She did. Yeah, she did. She knew I didn't really know my mom so well. My dad was such a present dad. And and and she didn't really know how to be a parent. She didn't, you know, and she loved watching him, you know, being a father, and she had never had a father.

And so when my dad died, it was suddenly like, who is this person I'm with? Like, I gotta get to know her. And I had a nanny who was was my mom, and my mom hated her and because of that. And but you know, my mom, my mom knew she could feel how attentive and I mean I I was there. I was always the one she would sort of call, and and it's funny. She would she would call and I would have to steal, I would steal myself, like, okay, who is she killed now? And whose body do I gotta bury? Oh no. And I would like, she'd be like, I'd really like you to come over. And finally I'd I go over, and one time nine out of ten times it was because she had redecorated something and and and wanted to show me.

One time she I I had started going out with a guy who's now the the co parent of my child, and we'd moved into a place together and she had seen the place and then she called me, she was like, honey, there's something I'd like you to talk about. And she just like dropped this a couple days in a row, and I finally went over and I was like, okay, what is that? And she's like, you know, when you love something, somebody you sometimes do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. I was like, what are you talking about mom? He's dead in the basement.

No, and she was like, I'm talking about the taxidermy and there was a taxidermy like this guy had some taxidermy and she was like, you know, it's just too much. The taxidermy I was like, This is what I've been worried about what you've dragged me here to confront me about. Anyway, I mean she wasn't wrong, but Well, with your father being s you know, the way you describe your father, I mean, he sound sounded like a a wonderful man. He was your stability. He was your he was your truth. He was your Yeah. You know, he made everything yeah seem right for a child.

And this is what we also don't realize. I mean, that's all children want is stability. They don't need money. They need they need certainty. You know, it's like I got a schedule, I know when I'm gonna eat, I know when my dad leaves and comes back. Yeah. You know, he does what he says. I need to go to sleep on time. I need all those things make for security. And your dad provided that to you for ten years and then he was gone relatively Yeah, very quick. I mean, yeah, very quick. And it's interesting, I because I used to think growing up like I had 10 years. I mean, I w I was so young. And but it but what I came to one of the things I came to realize among many things is just, you know what, 10 years was enough. I mean, I I wanted more, I wish I'd had more.

But in 10 years, he was able to do to give me that sense of this is what security feels like and this is what love feels like. And that's, you know, again, I I wish I had more, but it's it's been extraordinary. It to to suddenly realize, oh, you know what? Like it it was enough. Well that's if it's done right. Yeah. Right, 'cause there are a lot of kids who have ten years of parenting from somebody and it's not enough. Yeah. Right. And it it's funny that you mentioned that because one of the one of the reasons why I think I talk about death and mortality probably more with my kids.

And our mom always said this. I mean, it was funny as we were talking about, you know, just briefing and prepping for for you coming on, we realized we had different memories of how our parents talked about death. And I was like, mom talked about it all the time. And you felt like she didn't talk about it at all. She didn't talk about it in the way that she's talking about. She would always prepare us for her death. Like she's been dropping dead for twenty years. Right. Like, well, when I drop dead, you're gonna have to do this, this, and this. And I think she she looked at the two of us and tried to give each of us what we needed at the time because she did not talk to me about death.

But I a lot. But she apparently talked to me sha a lot about it. Maybe me as a daughter or as a the as a as a mother. I think she wanted me to know throughout my life, she wanted to hand us our lives early. Like you're responsible. You did this for yourself. My mom would always say, and she would say this publicly, I didn't have anything to do with raising Michelle and Craig. They, you know, they always knew this. But I think she told herself that because there's some security in knowing that when you are gone as a parent, that your children are gonna be okay. And I didn't understand that until I had kids.

And I realized that's the scariest thing is not just losing them or something happen happening to them. It was some, it's something happening to me. And I and my kids are gonna go through life not feeling like they have what they need to get through. And I think my mom was kind constantly telling me, you're fine, you have common sense, you're already making decisions as a child. I think she was trying to tell me what you came to realize that if you know your parents' values and their core, you've seen them, you've experienced them. If there's a loss, you're gonna be okay.

Yeah. My my dad wrote a book, about two years before he died called Families and it was a memoir about he grew up he grew up kind of poor in Mississippi on a farm during the depression and it was about the the life of families then and the family that he was born into and the family that he created with my mom and and my brother and me. And it's really a letter to my brother and me that he wrote knowing there was a good chance that he would die. His dad had died at fifty, his dad before that had died at fifty. I've gone through my whole life thinking I would die at fifty, I'm fifty eight now, and like I realized I had this just this crazy idea, which a lot of people have if you lose a parent early on that you're gonna die at the age their parent died.

Thankfully there's advances in medicine. Yeah. But but it's really it's such a blessing to have this book because it's it's it's the family history and it's all these names of people and stories that never get told in history books of people who were, you know, poor farmers who gathered for family reunions and their stories don't get written up in the history books very often. But, you know, I know about my great uncle Raspberry, who, you know, cried so much that people thought his bladder was just located too close to his eyeballs.

And all these kind of obscure, you know, characters that made up might be like the opera of my dad's childhood on this farm. In this next segment, I want to share some of our favorite family trips, the kinds that stick with you, shape you, and remind you what really matters. Brought to you by our friends at Rivian, built for the journeys that bring us closer together. So we went on a very limited amount of road trips when we were little. What is the one that you remember the most? Well is the one that we w w we we took a road trip every summer.

It was just the same road trip. Right. We went to Duke's Happy Holiday New York in White Cloud, Michigan. Yes, we did. And I don't know how long it was. It felt like we were driving to California. But when you're young being in a car for longer than fifteen minutes, I think I just lost track of time. I think it was it was just under two hours. Right, right. But it felt like it was all the Right, right. But it felt like it was all there. It wasn't long. And we sort of planned for it. Like we were going cross-country.

Right. You know, there were lunches packed, fried chicken, sandwiches, and we all we went with our cousins. Yes. So we were packed in that car, probably in very unsafe ways. No seat belts, adults in the front, kids in the back, three adults in the front, four kids in the back. It's crazy. In a And groceries in the trunk. I mean we had to have luggage. I don't even know how we all fit in it. We like we didn't have it, there weren't SUVs and we didn't have a station wagon. No. It was a two-door Buick Electra two twenty five.

Yeah, these were huge cars, huge sedans. The back seat literally could sit for kids. But it probably wasn't the safest way to. Yeah, that was that was one of the lessons we learned that But that was ha that's how it happened back in the day. People didn't use seat belts No. They, you know, there wasn't there weren't car seats. There, you know, are all the adult smoke. They did. And they had smoked the entire car ride. Yeah. And we just sat in the back and endured. Well, you know you know the trip that I'm reminded of and I think you may have forgotten.

Well, you're gonna remember when I remind you m remind you was when you and I drove to South Carolina when we were in college. Oh, yeah. When we were in college, you we did do a a a brother sister road trip. Brother sister road trip. To visit our grandparents in Georgetown, South Carolina. And we rented a car. Was this spring break or was it a just a short It was it was spring break because that would have been the only time I could go. Yeah, 'cause you had basketball loss. Yes. And I s when we said, All right, let's go visit the grandparents.

They'll be really surprised. We're gonna surprise them. And it was a seven ish hour drive. Mm-hmm. And although you had had your license for quite some time, I would not let you drive. And I a was and am an excellent driver. You are a very good thing. But you were being very big brothers. Like, I got this. I got this. And I was like, You sure I can drive, you know. So I was the navigator, which it wasn't a huge navigational task. It was pretty much a straight straight down ninety five. So I would always I w I would ask throughout the trip.

She she would ask and You need a break? And I would say, No, I'm good. And then about four and a half hours in, I was so tired. You were loopy, you know. I got to the point where I finally said, Okay, you can drive. It's like Yeah and then thank goodness I let you drive and I think you were comforted because you were driving and I was sleepy. And I wasn't falling asleep because I was watching you. I was like, He needs a break. Yes. So you went to sleep and I wound up driving the r rest of the way there. You but every twenty min twenty to thirty minutes I would come up and be like, You okay?

Is everything okay? And then I would Fall back to sleep. And I'm just like my God, this dude, right? You were trying to be the big brother. But yeah, that was a fun trip. And we surprised our grandparents, which was which was fun. We felt like real adult. We felt like adults. We planned the trip, we got the car, we made it happen. Yeah, but you know, spending time with with family is incredibly valuable, making memories to last a lifetime. And Rivian is here to inspire families to adventure forever together. And if you've been listening to our show, you know we have partnered with Rivian.

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It's amazing to hear his voice. And actually, I just about maybe two months ago got an email from somebody from Mississippi Public TV. And I've had no I got a radio interview my dad did about 10 years ago. That was the first time I heard his voice. Because I have no recordings of him or anything. I had no moving images of him. And a lady from Mississippi Public Radio, an archivist, found an old TV interview my dad gave promoting this book, and she sent it to me. And I for 20 minutes I watched my dad sit there talking moving.

It was the first time I'd seen him moving. I I it was just incredible. It was interesting. I mean, it it was, it brought back it's so interesting to me the cycles of history that repeat in families that we don't even know about. So like my son is named Wyatt because my dad was named Wyatt. But I've recently just randomly started calling my son Buddy, which I've never called anybody Buddy in my whole life. I'm not like a buddy. Thanks very much. No, I'm not really and I was been going through these things still and I found all these letters that my dad's brothers and sisters sent to him.

They're all addressed to Buddy. And it turns out that was his name. That's how he was known back then. I mean he wasn't Y Cooper, he was Buddy Cooper. And you had never heard anyone call them back. Ever heard anybody call him buddy. And I mean, maybe somebody as a kid said this to me, but I had no memory of it. Right. And then watching this TV thing, my dad I like literally, I had just been I've got a place in the in the country and there's a little stream on it. And I've been really liking my son and I like to clear all the leaves from the stream and and like get the the stream moving.

Yeah, that's a unique thing. Yeah. And you know, it's it's very satisfying. You're out in nature and it's fun and there's snakes jump out and stuff. Yeah, that's like a blast. But my dad is on this TV show talking, and he suddenly says that he's like, Well, I go with my sons into Central Park and only we know about this little stream, and we spend a lot of time clearing the leaves from the stream. And I I was just like, Oh and then the memory came back to me of like, Oh my god, I remember doing this with my dad. And the fact that I am doing these things with my son without even realizing it, I just find kind of extraordinary.

So do you have any any recollections of when your dad was alive? I do, yeah, but they're they're not, you know, they're more like the memory of the softness of his stomach when we were I would lie on on the floor with him watching television and my head was on a stomach, or he he was a writer, so I remember the sound of typewriter keys, you know, late at night. Things like that. But there's a lot, they're they're very fragmentary. There's not it's not and and it's been so hard for me to, it's only now that I've sort of started to remember more.

Like I ran from, you know, at 10 years old, I I was so terrified by his death and just shocked and angry and filled with rage. And I just buried it. I just stuffed it all down. And when my brother died 10 years later, I stuffed that down too. And I propelled me into the world. And and in some ways it was a very effective strategy for a kid to, you know, to have rocket fuel of rage and anger and and heartbreak. But what I've learned in doing this grief podcast and in in actually going through the things is I realized I came to the realization about two years ago that that or about a year ago, that I'd never grieved.

Yeah. And and I I had this realization when I had stopped doing the podcast. I was like, This is too overwhelming. I can't do this. I listened to a lot of these voicemails. And finally one day I was like, Oh, I'll I'll start a you know, maybe I'll sh I'll just go back down the basement, start again. I would Mm-hmm. After a couple of months, I opened up a box and hadn't I just randomly selected this box and there were like a hundred of them in the basement. And it turned out to be a de a box of my dad's papers and a bunch of files, Muldy and Milde.

I opened the first one up and there was an essay inside he'd written. I looked at it, put my glass on, looked at the title, and it was called The Importance of Grieving. And in it, he wrote about, and he quoted some psychologists, child psychologists, about what happens to kids who don't grieve and how they go through their life or can go through their life with sort of this melancholy they can never quite put their finger on. And I realized, like, oh my God, that's me. That is what I've done my entire life. And that was for me the beginning of okay, how do I, you know, turn to that little child who's still buried deep inside me and who is the framework through which I see everything.

And how do I, you know, start to grieve? And so that's that's Wow. Yeah, that's why I keep doing this podcast. Yeah, well that the the that's the answer to the very first question. It's a long answer, but No, but I I mean I'm just I'm just picturing ten year old you. Yeah. I mien it my my heart breaks. So after having done this for a while and then turning it off and back on again, have you learned a strategy that is helpful for people to grieve? Or is it individualized? Because I I gotta tell you, it I felt like we grieve we the w when our dad died, my mom was the type where, okay, like m like Mish was saying.

Get up, get key, got going. Feel feel feel sorry today, maybe tomorrow, maybe a third day, but then after that just get on up. Whether you're whether you're finished grieving or not, get up, go to work, go do your thing. Is there a right, wrong Is there a way to grieve? I certainly, you know, in the world I certainly am no expert. And, you know, I ran from it, I buried it, but it's doesn't go away. And it is it it has stopped me from being able to, you know, I am wary all the time, which helps in my job at times, especially going to war zones and stuff, which is how I started my career.

But I it makes me it keeps me distant from people. It keeps me everything is a threat. Everything is seen through the lens of this ten year old boy who's still. And why would you want to get close to somebody who could Well, a guy or exactly. For me, the voice in my head is this voice that I developed to protect that little kid long ago. And it is telling me all the signals it sends me are hey, don't trust this person. You got to be wary about this. I'm not sure about this. I read rooms like nobody's business. Any room I walk to, I clock everybody, even if I'm not looking at them, even it seems like I'm unaware.

And it's exhausting and it's not healthy. And so I've been trying to figure out as an adult is how do you start to Let go. Yeah, and also give room or space for grief. And like you can hold it softly. And I wanna I don't want there to be a sadness behind my eyes like my mom had and that I saw. And and so it's I'm highly motivated and it's it's it's an incredible thing that there is, you know, it will still be painful, but that that the wound is the root to the gift. By it's only by allowing yourself to feel the sadness that you actually feel the joy and you feel them again.

That that my dad is alive inside me. The you know, I can feel even the little boy I was, you know, and I talk to them. And our current culture is not helpful. I think it's strange that that society has set up that we no longer talk about grief. I mean, it wasn't always this way when my dad grew up in this, you know, small town in Mississippi. Everybody went to funerals every weekend. Like grief was a much more it was something spoken about. People wore black. You even if you didn't know the person, you went to the the funeral, you brought, you know, food and my grandmother played piano at funerals and my dad would go and his job was like to hold babies.

At funerals and there was a you know there there were there was more of a commons of the soul. There was more of a a community aspect to grief that that has been shunted aside as taboos changed. You know, it used to be you couldn't talk about sex, but death and grief you talked about. Now you can talk about sex, but you can't talk about grief. It's a weird shift. And you know, and and grief is a ritual. Yeah, we're losing a lot of rituals. Absolutely. And rituals are so important. Absolutely. And rituals are so important. Which I had never really thought about Francis Weller's who this writer I mentioned, he's a he does grief rituals. And he did a a small ritual of for it was about 200 people in this room.

And there were bowls in each corner with stones in it. And you could take a stone and basically whisper the name of a loved one. And then you would put it in this bowl with water with all the other people's stones. And at the end, all the stones were collected. And I kind of was like, I don't know about this. It seems kind of kind of cheesy to me. And in five minutes, I was like weeping over my stone. I mean, it was incredible. And I don't like I'm trying not to be a person who displays emotion in public. But like there were all I I mean, it was it was a beautiful, like everybody was into this.

And so I was like, all right, I'll go pick up a stone. And suddenly I'm like, oh my God, I need another stone. And like finally they were like, Anderson, enough of the stones. Like you gotta give move it along, kid. But it was incredible. It was really incredible. And and I think there's tremendous power in in that ritual and communal aspect of it. And and respecting aging. I I we don't do it well. We we don't we don't celebrate the moving on into that that stage, which should be beautiful of wisdom and knowledge, you know, it where retirement is honored.

You know, we didn't have nursing homes and senior centers because families reincorporated, you know, you didn't lose the elderly. They stayed with you. They became a part of the the fixture. They were, you know, they they they played a critical role in the f not only the family unit, but the community unit. And I th I think of just a crazy example when I was a young attorney and I was a first year and I worked for a big law firm. They had like 30 floors in a building downtown. One day I got an assignment from a partner to take a memo over to one of the retired partners who still had an office.

And I didn't even know this part of the firm existed. It was it was almost like this, you know, this shadow system of law of of of firms. And they had everything that the regular office had, but it was older. It wasn't remodeled. There were older there was an older receptionist. It was a quiet floor. And the offices were still set up, you know, there were corner offices and And I went and I found the person, I gave the thing, but I left there feeling really creepy. Because I thought, okay, yeah, this is where this is the floor where old partners come to die.

It made me think about how, and I continue to think about how we treat people and why people don't want to move on. And I think my husband said this recently. I mean, one of the problems with society today is that nobody wants to move on from leadership. People hang on too long and they hang on beyond their usefulness or even their practicality. I mean, as we get older, we think a different way. You know, leaders are supposed to move on to make room for the next generation that has new ideas, new energy. But because there's no place for our senior leaders to go with honor and dignity, I think people hold on too long.

And I I think we suffer as a society, as a as a nation, as a world, because we haven't figured out how to honor our elders to give them a space to leave gracefully, to really give them a place of honor so that they they feel ready and anxious to go there. It doesn't feel like the end of the road, it's the beginning of something new. And we don't do that well in America or in the world. Quite frankly. And I think people are are, you know, I think younger people especially are just sort of freaked out by, scared by the aging process, don't want to deal with it and so shunted aside. Just as I think with grief oftentimes when, you know, somebody in your office has lost a loved one and they come back after, you know, what, two days of bereavement relief or whatever ridiculous some tiny amount people are given.

And people don't know what to say. And think sometimes, and I I hear this all the time from listeners of the podcast, you know, pe people either don't say anything because they think, oh, I don't wanna maybe they think, oh, I don't wanna, you know, bring this up and upset the person, as if it it's not constantly in that person's head all the time. You know, I think about my dad and my brother and everybody I've lost all the time. It's always there. It's not like somebody's gonna upset me by bringing it up. But also people don't know what to say. And sometimes when people do start to say things, it seems like people are kind of probing to see how bad they should feel.

Like, well, how old was the person? And were they sick for a long time? And were you close? And the kind of a checklist of like, okay, well, you weren't really close and they were old, so it was kind of expected. And I'll never ask you about this again. Right. I don't have to worry about it. And it makes me feel better now. I was like, Oh, okay. Not too close. Oh, grandmother. Oh okay fine fine.

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I have a question because I think you would be you've talked to so many people through your show or connected with so many people. What would w w what would be the first thing you said you would say to somebody who had lost someone when you when you ran walked into work? Because and and it's okay if you don't have an answer. I I have people all day long now. The nice thing about doing this podcast is I have people I mean, I flew from New York to LA this morning. I had some I had two people in the airport stop me and tell me about somebody they had lost.

And it is I I it's beautiful. It's the most real conversation you could possibly have. And the fact that they took a moment to tell me about their loved one. And and I, you know, I I asked the I asked them the name of the person. And you know, sometimes it really depends on the situation. I mean, look, sometimes some someone doesn't really want to talk about it and they just wanna l let you know that they they they have had this loss. So a lot of it I think is kind of just getting a sense from the other person. But I you know, I sometimes I won't I generally won't ask, well, what were they die of? Yeah, what old were they? Or yeah, tell me what happened. I'll usually ask like, how do you how do you meet?

How'd you meet your husband? And immediately someone smiles and has this story of like the first time they met or something that brings up that that lets the other person know you're interested and you care. Yeah. And and yet also that maybe allows them to touch for a moment that that person and feel that person for a second. I think that's the most powerful. It it it again, I think it largely d depends that. Yeah. I I feel like such a schmuck, sorry, Mish. I feel like such a schmuck because of the way I deal with grief. I put on the person who's grieving, right?

So I'm very perfunctory. Well how Yeah, what do you I this is exactly how so. Okay. Sorry for your loss. You know, that's like that's like the go-to when you wanna say something, but you don't want any more facts. Right. And and that that's me and and just hearing you say asking, just asking more questions. I'm like fearful of doing that. Fearful that it's gonna upset them because it torches gonna ups upset new. Yeah. That's why I feel like a schmuck, 'cause I'm thinking about myself this whole time. When I see your reaction to how moving this is for you, I'm like, dad.

Well the question is, have you grieved? Yeah. In my opinion, I've grieved the way I thought I would grieve, which is okay, I had my three days and then off back to work. Right. There are times, and and Kelly knows this where something will remind me of my mom. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you can't talk. Yeah. And that's And that's probably why I don't say stuff to people. Because because before it would be something remind me of my father. And that then when it got lot far enough away, I was like, All right, I'm better. Right. But I I mean I gotta tell you for you know, for somebody who's grieving to have that interaction with you and to see the tears in your eyes as I'm seeing right now, it Yeah.

That would be an extraordinary moment to share with with some someone you may never see him again. Never seen him. Probably won't. Yeah. But you've had a genuine like connection with another human being about the most important fundamental thing, which you both share, even though you don't even know that person's name. Yeah. But did you when when my mom died, I was ready for for her death. What I wasn't ready for was the realization that I'm the last one left. And that hit me. I mean, I was my mom had like your my mom had been talking about dying her entire life.

And usually in the vein of like, well, I'll never be a burden. And you can always find 50 second-all. I was like, can't can you? I don't know, like, why are you saying that to a 14-year-old? That's kind of freaking me out. Like, do I need to call authorities or something? But after a while, I like tuned it out. Cause it was just, you know, people say stuff. You you have no idea when the end of your life comes. My mom was was holding on for as long as she could. But that feeling of, oh wow, I'm I I'm the last one left who knows all like just the little tiny memories that seemed important when I was a child, or the little sounds in my house and all of that just kind of and I'm so I think that's why going through the stuff has been so hard for me because everything is infused with memory and meaning, even if it's, you know.

A hundred Christmas cards that my mom received in nineteen seventy three. Like I go through each one 'cause some of them are for some pretty interesting people. I was like, Oh, I didn't know Charlie Chaplin sent Christmas cards. But some of them are just, you know, we're some random person and and you know, those I'll throw out. But it's it's very hard to kind of I find it very hard to kind of let go of these things that that 'cause I feel like it's letting go of a piece of them basically. I think I'm just the Really? Yeah.

And it may be protective. Right. I am not I'm notoriously not a saver. Okay. I mean and even with mom right? Our mom, you know, she lived with us in the White House, but she kept our childhood home. Yeah. And when when she left the White House, I d we didn't want her to go back to a home because we just thought for security reasons right? So we got her a condo downtown Chicago with doormen and everything. But the house was still there. It was sort of like an albatross for her, right? Because you still had to check the furnace and you know, mow the lawn and all of that sort of stuff. But I used to push her to go through the basement and get rid of stuff, right?

Because she had my law library books. I was like, mom, they don't even have, you know, law books don't last. The law changes, they are obsolete, don't save them, you know. And so she finally did, you know, it may have been weird. Well, Kelly, I'm sure Kelly did. Yeah. Right. Yeah. My sister in law did. We w finally she was like, Okay, I'll get rid of this stuff. So But I I didn't feel You didn't feel attachment to that. Interesting. Because I just felt like that's that's a bur that's a lot. Yeah. And I didn't want to do that.

Yeah yeah. I didn't want to be in a position where I w my mother would be gone and then I would be left sorting through all of that stuff. Now Kelly did that for me. And maybe my sister in law will have a harder time. I was just as hard for her. And thank God she did it. But I I don't think. I would have and I didn't I didn't want to have that. Work left to do. Do you do you think if you had gone through that thing, that it would have been emotional for you? Or does it? Yeah. And it might have helped with the grieving.

So was was not wanting to go through it not wanting that emotion or just this is incredibly inconvenient and like this is who wants to spend however, hundred hours. I think it was probably a little bit of a boat. And and and and really you have to remember my mom was still alive. So when we were going through stuff, she was like, throw that away, throw that away, don't throw that away. You should keep this. And we finally got it down to the city. I mean, that's a nice way to do it. It was a nice way. Because she tells you the stories.

Yes, yes. It was, it was, it was a better way to do it. But then when she died, she still had a bunch of stuff when we just like took it all to our house. And then what we're trying to do is not have it so that our kid, when we die, our kids take it to their house, right? But I will say that you got across to mom because she was at a point when she was still alive, still living on Euclid, where she was like, Come on over. Euclid is the place we grew up in. Mm-hmm. Come on over, let's get rid of this stuff. And I think we got rid of just about everything, and that's why we probably can't find your spiral notebooks.

I know. I know. My mom had a storage unit in Queens that she had never been to. And she would just send stuff to the storage unit. We didn't have it. We didn't have it. I didn't I didn't believe in I don't to this day believe in a storage unit. It's like when they told you that they sent your dog to the farm. Yeah. My mom would send her to the storage unit. And like sometimes, like 20 years later, she'd be like, you know what? There's this chair I remember. And she had a lady named Nora who'd worked with my mom for 60 years as her housekeeper.

Nora would schlep to the storage unit. Oh man. Find this chair, bring it back. And my mom would embrace it like it was a long lost child for a week and then be like, it doesn't work anymore. And the chair would go back. So like it it was just it it's like the last scene of Citizen Kane where there's this warehouse and like they're just going through it throwing things in the fire. I I I mean, I think you said this ear earlier. It's like there there's not one way to grieve, right? And I can imagine for your mother whose childhood was so precarious, like she didn't have she didn't have one.

Yeah yeah. She didn't have a parent, you know, and the parent that she had through the custody battle they took her. Yeah yeah. From the woman that I mean, I d hear her story and I and I grieve for her. And going through my brother's I mean brother killed himself in front of her, going through his things were just it was impossible for her. Yeah. Absolutely. So I can understand her like that chair. Like that's a memory. Right. That's like the thing that th she didn't she didn't have lessons. Right. It was funny. It was funny actually, once like I don't know, the last couple of years of her life, she called me up one day, breathless. She was like, I found this screen on first dibs that was made out of some Chinese wallpaper that was once in a dining room my mom had in a house we had when I was a kid.

She found it where? On first day of somebody, I guess. Yeah. I guess when she sold the house, somebody took this Chinese wallpaper down, sold it to some store and they made screens out of it. So my mom just randomly found these screens and she was like, Oh my God, that's the wallpaper. So my mom was like, you have to get it. I was like, I have to get it. Okay. And they turned out to be like crazy expensive screens. I didn't know screens were so. I was like, Who do you do? It was like a screen. What do we scream? Screens.

Like, what are we doing? There's nothing, we're not on it. Anyway, she was like, You really got to get it. I mean so much to me. So I was like, okay, fine. I got it. And I mean, we're talking like it was like $50,000. I mean, this was like I did extra, like, I took on a couple of speaking gigs to get to get these screens. And she embraces them like this this was gonna solve her life, her problems in her life. She brings them, gets them in a room. A week later, she calls me up. She's like, I've had to redecorate the dining room around the screens.

Which means I'm redecorating the dining room around the screens. And then two weeks, four four weeks go by and she's like, Do you have any room for these screens? They're just you know, I thought it was the answer, but it just doesn't work. Yeah. So And I've come to believe that things aren't the thing. Yeah, they're not right. Never but as my mom would acknowledge, like she would redecorate constantly, but it never quite got it what the issue really was. Right. And it cost a lot of money along that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a, you know, I I I'm trying to practice I try to practice that as maybe part of my grieving process.

That it's it's not stuff, you know. I don't want it as a memory of me. I don't want my kids to feel that, you know, keeping this thing that I just got forever and lugging it around with them for the rest of their life is a way to stay connected to me. Or to stay connected to my mother or my father. It's for me, stories matter. I that it goes back to story. Yeah. You know, I'd I'd rather sit and talk about all the times. Remember the time. And do we remember and relay the pass those stories on to our kids as a better way of honoring our our elders, our our our ancestors, than with a storage room full of their stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't recommend that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I which by the way, this w is for one of the reasons I'm so motivated to go all through this stuff 'cause I don't want to leave for my kids. That's like this room full of stuff that they're like, Who are these people? I know, right? What am I supposed to do with screens? To talk about. How how does this work now that you know and you've gone through this? How does this inform your parenting? And how are you preparing yourself to sort of convey the right message to your boys?

Well to me, I mean, like telling the story of my my of my parents and their parents to my kids is really important. Like I want my kids to know that I like I didn't pay any attention to my mom's family, her history, her family history growing up, like the Vanderbelts. I consciously wanted nothing to do with them. I at my in my 12 year old, you know, lizard brain looked at like the poor Coopers, farmers as the family you wanted. The messed up Vanderbilts. And I was like, I'm I'm a color beef. I'm not, I'm glad I don't have this.

It's like I wanna connect with Uncle Raspberry. Exactly. Like, so I'm I'm that. I'm a Cooper. I'm not a Vanderbilt. And and it wasn't like there was a pot of gold waiting for me in like the Vanderbilt archives. Like they spent all that money very quickly, the Vanderbilts did, from what I but I once I had kids of my own, suddenly I was like, I know nothing about the Vanderbilts. I know I can tell you about the Coopers. And so I actually ended up writing a book about them mainly because I wanted to study them and understand who they were, so I could figure out what to tell, like explain to my kids like this weird lineage they have.

Like my dad, the only connection to the Vanderbilts I had as a kid, my dad once took me to Grand Central Station, which was founded by Yeah. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbald, who is not a nice guy. And there's a statue of him outside Grand Central Station, which by the way he paid for and had made and set up there. No, it wasn't like his workers loved him and he did it. Like it was his. And he made photographs. He he had paintings painted of himself and gave them out to all his children, not that they wanted them either.

But but I remember my dad taking me to see this statue when I was like six. And the only thing I took away from it was that grandparents turned into statues when they die, which is very relatable. I know everybody feels this. Oh yeah. We all have. But I know my Andy Cohen makes fun of me. Anytime I tell a childhood story, he's like, Oh, the miserable boy L.

Things, but also, you know, this guy who wasn't nice to any of the women in the family and he sent his wife to a mental hospital because he wanted to have an affair with the the babysitter. And, you know, so it's it's I I do think I you know for me learning the history has been fascinating, but it's not something I ever paid any attention to. I just thought no good can come of believing you're part of this thing that doesn't exist. Yeah. I mean I'm picturing I'm I'm I'm picturing the statue, you in front of the statue, thinking that's where grandparents go.

Yes. Yeah. Of course, then like a month later, I went to the Museum of Natural History with my, you know, I don't know, it was my first grade class, Miss Critz was the teacher. But we went to the Museum of Natural History in my class, and we're outside, and there's now that, you know, now infamous statue of Teddy Roosevelt on a horse with two indigenous people. And the teacher was like, Does anyone know who this is? And I raised my hand, I was like, I think it's my grandfather. Father. Again relatable. Easy. And then they beat me up.

And But I the the thing that I'd like, I mean, I know we've got a listener question, and we'll we'll get to this, but when I saw the documentary of you and your mother having those conversations, that's the thing that I I that I I would encourage people to do now. It's like collect those stories, you know, have those conversations now. I mean, grief is a thing we we have work to do to understand it, but there is just so much power in getting to know your own story while people are still alive. They are not. And you know, with each generation the details fade away more and more.

Fade away it gets a little murkier and you don't know who was that and you know in our family it's like well are were they really a part of our family? Is that a real cousin or was that a play cousin? It's a yeah we know you wanna you wanna know all that stuff. And that's that's work that's better than having a storage locker full of stuff. Because it does I I will tell you, once I read about the Vanderbilts and and wrote a book about 'em, it made me feel more connected to America in a way. It made me feel more connected to New York City, like this city that they were in hundreds of years ago. And I became fascinated with, you know, the hidden history of New York. And, you know, I the there's the Starbucks near my house that was the a site of of the the Astor riots, when th there were t competing groups in New York rioting over two competing opera houses in lower Manhattan, which makes no sense.

Well now that's on what's the show? Oh, is that on the guildage? Yeah. Well I know. Oh my god, that's you. That's your family. Yeah yeah yeah. No, that is that is literally my family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well they we we a lot of the flat lines. We saw that there was the apparatus. The opera rides. Okay. Well, Yeah. There you go. Gotta watch the Gilded Age. Yes. I don't need like yeah, it's like I've never seen it. I've never I don't blame it. I've never seen it. It's too close to a hundred. Right right. The country home was never that small.

We catastrophists can only take so much. Exactly. But but it did make me and knowing my dad's history and I did the Skip Gates follow your, you know, find your roots show, which was incredible. But but it makes you feel more connected to s the world and to where you are and to your community. And it just makes it just makes you feel grounded in a way that I think so many of us don't grow up feeling grounded to to our surroundings. We're kind of floating through.

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It's time to put that business idea into action and start the next chapter. Again, that's shopify.com slash IMO. Hey everyone, Craig Robinson here. And you know, I was just thinking about traveling with the kids and how confining a hotel can be. Let me tell you, sharing one bathroom with two adults and two teenagers trying to keep the lights off at bedtime, not waking anybody up just doesn't work. That's why I love finding a place to stay on Airbnb. I mean, can you just imagine the four of us in one tiny room and we're sharing two queen beds?

Can't can't handle it. And personally, this has been a game changer because I I tell you, I like getting up in the middle of the night sometimes and turning the TV on to help myself go back to sleep. And how about getting a midnight snack? It just makes the whole trip easier and way more enjoyable if we all have our own room and we have a place that we can convene when we want to. With more space, more privacy, and a place that really feels like home. Booking an Airbnb for your trip just makes sense for families.

Well, we have a listener question that we always try and Pay it forward here at IMO. And this question is from Nancy in Salt Lake City. Hi, Craig and Michelle. This is Nancy. I would love to hear you both talk a little about dealing with the loss of your mom, which I'm sure is gonna be a hard question. I recently lost my dad in twenty twenty-two, my mom in twenty twenty-three, which obviously still makes me emotional. That was a hard 13 months, and obviously the time since has been hard too. As an only child, it really has been very difficult to process because I don't have anybody to process with a lot of the time.

I'd love to hear how you guys have processed the grief, helped each other, and moved on after losing your dad when you were younger and your mom more recently. Thank you. It's one of the f few questions that is aimed right square at our forehead, so You want to go first? Yeah, I you know, I I I think I'm still processing, you know. I don't I don't think that there's a you process it and that's that. And I and I'm learning that there's no need to have processed it. I mean, I d I don't wanna process my parents' lives and feel like I can pack it up and that's that. Now that you know, their memory, they are in my head every day.

Every the way I lead my life, how I show up in the world, the words that come out of my mouth, the impact that I'm trying to have. It's all it's all because of that memory and the loss is a part of it. So I don't wanna I I I'm still working that through. Are the memories tinged with sadness because of the loss? Or is there distance that it you can look at it without the It it depends on the time of day, right? I mean, there we there are plenty of time plenty of times when we sit and laugh. Our family is laughter, you know. That's one one of the ways we deal with with grief.

We sit and tell stories and we laugh about it. And then there are times, just like Craig, that feeling of just the mention of their name, it can't come out. And it's not sadness, it's just like it's grief. Missing. And I that hasn't gone away. It did doesn't go away. My our dad died. It's been Thirty four years ago. Thirty-four years ago. And look, I'm speaking all the time and I get interviewed all the time. And there's always the what would your dad think of? You know. I don't care how many times I get that question, just answering it it chokes me up.

Because of joy, but it's also longing of what he missed and didn't get a chance to see. And you know, that's all I don't think that's ever gonna go away. I I but I don't know that I it needs to. Yeah. I I just think it's a part of me now, like like life. His life is a part of me, his death. Do you feel your pardon me? Yeah. Yeah. I feel them in different ways. I mean, time, what I would say, time matters, right? I mean, in terms of the day-to-day pain loss grief that's one of those things where I believe time heals all wounds. It just, you know, after a while it the the cut becomes you know, skin healed and then it's scab and then it's scar, but the scar is always there.

And my my the loss of my parents are scars on me and they will be there forever. But that's a part of life. I there there can be no other way. So I think part, you know, hearing you say that you just have to develop a relationship with grief. It's it, you know, it's the goal isn't to grieve and have it gone. It's just like this is now a part of my life. I had the blessing of having these two amazing people whose loss I feel. And I couldn't have that without I, you know, the loss is a part of having them. So if I had to do it all again, I'd choose to have them and go through the loss.

But do I ever just feel like that's done? No no. Some days I do, some days I don't. I you know, I would say to Nancy and and in in this discussion, my parents, my but my mom particularly, because my dad died first, she did a really good job of. Well, first of all, my parents did a really good job of loving us unconditionally right? And letting us know they loved us. There's nothing better than that. Especially when you lose one early. Because my mom did a real, really good job. And you'll remember this, and and some people have heard help heard me tell this story.

My mom said to us, or she said to me, I don't know if she said it to us when we were, we were fighting when my dad passed away. Of course, we were We have one fight. We had that was like our yes, we had one fight. But it was like the only fight we had in our lives was when my dad died. And that was grief. And that was grief at the time. But my what you you'll love this. My mom said to us, you know, your dad loved you, and you knew how you knew how much he loved you. And he knew how much you loved him. So you don't have to be upset about not knowing you guys loved each other.

Because he knew he told me all the time. And that eased my pain. I don't know about you, but it eased my pain. And it made me sadder at the same time. And as my mom was getting older, we would talk about that. Mm-hmm. And that was her way of saying that she loved us. And don't worry, when I die, I know you love me. That was a that's a gift that parents can give their kids when they're alive to help the grieving process. Mm-hmm. I mean, it was it it and and when I get choked up, it's only because I miss her. I don't think I missed out on anything and would love to have her back.

But to Misha's point, you know, maybe I am, maybe you just grieve until the end of time. I don't know. Because I I felt like I had got over my father's death. I had gotten over my father's death until my mom died. And then I re grieved for him while I was grieving for my mom. But even the thought of I got over my father's death, why? Why why would that be why is that a mission? Well i I and I'm not it's it's more r it's more a rhetorical Cool question. But it's not even a question. But it's only semantics in in my case.

I mean Yeah, but I but I think that that's what people are trying to get to. They're like, When do I get over this? How do I how do I get over this? And we're learning we have learned today that maybe you n you you never get over it and you maybe you don't need to get over it. Maybe it's a relationship like you said. It's a relationship now for the rest of your life. What? I think that word process is I'm not big on jargon and and I think that word process is is very overused because to me it's like a word everybody uses.

I don't really know what it means to to process grief like like a cured meat or something like that. I'm not I'm not exactly sure what what it is. I mean, I I understand the therapeutic nature of it and you know feeling things and and there are steps and all that. But but I think a lot of people I hear from will say, okay, there's you know, there's steps you go through and you process it, and then suddenly you find yourself back at step one because some you hear a song, and it takes you right back to to your kid again.

I ran from this stuff for so long. I know what it is not to process and and to try to push it down and it doesn't go away. And I know I feel better. It's harder feeling, but I I I like feeling and it makes me a more able to to feel your sadness and to feel your sadness and and and I think that's a bond. You know, I I've received the benefit of feeling my dad again, and that's an incredible thing. I would always hear people talk about, oh, you'll, you know, I feel them in my heart, or and to me it always felt like a Hallmark card, but to suddenly like feel my dad inside is beautiful.

I don't feel it as much with my brother because I think there's we we we both went to our individual corners when my dad died. We never talked about it. And I think his death was so violent and sudden and shocking to me that I feel like I I sometimes feel like I don't even know who he was. And that's a terrible feeling. And I'm hoping that will change. But it's it's you know to feel yeah to feel these people alive inside me is incredible and and it's it's a such a blessing. And you can only get that if you process or whatever word you want to use.

I want us all to just kind of hold space for it to say, yeah, this this is going to have an impact on me. Or it has had an impact on me. And maybe by doing that, we can think about when something triggers us, when we're having a bad day, don't brush off. I wonder what's going on. You know, how about immediately going to what am I grieving? You know, and and maybe be easier on yourself first about it. Or get get help or reach out or talk about it. So I would say to our our listener to Nancy, like talk, you know, don't sit alone in it.

Reach out, have conversations, find somebody to unburden yourself with the feelings. And that you gotta do that. Don't sit alone. If she's thinking about it, then I'd say don't don't spend a whole lot of time just thinking about it. Do it, find a place, find a person. Yeah, I mean the the power of you know grief support groups sometimes it's hard to find in communities, but they're they're you know often available and and they that could be an extraordinary thing to be in a place where you don't have to explain yourself to, you know, people who are in that room because they they just know inherently I was talking to a woman, Mary, who's whose son died of glioblastoma, and I I I talked to her every couple of weeks.

We just talk on the phone late at night and I never met her, but but that's one of the things she just started going to a a a support group and she says, like I finally feel I can I can relax there. I can 'cause I don't need to kind of explain, you know, or am I going crazy? I can just be. And I would say, Nancy, whatever you're feeling, remember that probably everybody around you that you interact is trying to figure this out. That's for sure. And maybe it feels less lonely if we all see us as, you know, people in this process together and it all hurts.

And you know, whether you had a great relationship with the person or whatever their age or how it happened, it's a thing that happens. And if we could just be more gentle with other people in the way we would want to be gentle to our 10-year-old selves, that just that process of offering gentleness is helpful. I mean, I I I see that in you, the process of taking in other people's leaving space for other people's empathy, this whole prop prop program, this project of yours is healing you. Yeah, no without a doubt.

And you would think, my God, that's a lot. Like we started out. Why did you why are you doing this? Well, we were ending this conversation undering, like what a what a gift you have that you have this healing experience happening, which ends up being you holding space for other people. That's a lesson. Like that's the power of kindness and empathy. And we need to be thinking about that in these times. And all you can do is once you leave somebody, is to live a life worthy of theirs. That's that's how I think about it.

My my grieving is my life. It's like I'm honoring Marion and Frazier by showing up every day in a way that would honor them. And I think that's no, it's better than tearing shit up. They would be very proud of you. Thanks, man. Anderson, thank you, man. Yeah. This is This is a pleasure. I really love it. Really neat. Really neat.

Questions about this episode

What is "ANDERSON COOPER Opens Up on His Journey with Loss & Grief | IMO" about?

Anderson Cooper reflects on his childhood experiences with loss and grief, drawing connections from his family history to his understanding of mortality, using a visit to a statue of Commodore Vanderbilt as a poignant metaphor for how people are remembered after they pass away. The discussion also touches on family dynamics and shared moments, highlighting how personal connections and everyday…

What is mentioned in this Michelle Obama episode?

52 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Vanderbilts, Families, CeraVe, IMO, Grand Central Station, Nothing Left Unsaid. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "ANDERSON COOPER Opens Up on His Journey with Loss & Grief | IMO"?

The episode runs 1 h 21 min; the transcript is about 14,516 words in 125 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 December 17, 2025.