All There Is with Anderson Cooper - Introducing: All There Is with Anderson Cooper

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Anderson Cooper takes us on a deeply personal exploration of loss and grief. He starts recording while packing up the apartment of his late mother Gloria Vanderbilt. Going through her journals and keepsakes, as well as things left behind by his father and brother, Cooper begins a series of emotional and moving conversations about the people we lose, the things they leave behind, and how to live on - with loss, with laughter, and with love.    To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is what always happens. I end up coming over here. I spend, like, hours going through stuff, thinking I can throw stuff out, and I end up not throwing anything out. This is Anderson Cooper. Just before my son, Sebastian, was born earlier this year, I sold my mom's apartment

and had to finally go through the stuff she'd left behind when she died. This is cool. So here's the telegram from Frank Sinatra, San Francisco International Airport, to Miss Gloria Vanderbilt. He writes, I'm on my way, darling.

I miss you and wish you were sharing the seat with me. Love, the feller on the white horse. That's kind of exactly what you would want a telegram from Frances Albert Sinatra to be. My mom was Gloria Vanderbilt and lived a pretty epic life, full of great loves and a lot of loss. And it turns out she saved pretty much everything. So far, I've discovered secret journals, thousands of photographs, and things about her and my family I never knew before. And packed away in drawers and boxes, my mom left me hidden notes as a kind of guide through it all.

Another note. It says, Anderson, blouse and skirt I was wearing when Carter died. When my brother killed himself in front of her, this is what she was wearing. I didn't know she had saved this. With all the tragedies my mom went through, she never asked, why me? Why did this happen to me? She'd always ask, why not me? Why should me be exempt from the pain of living and losing? And she was right. We all lose people we love. And yet when it happens to us and we're grieving, it feels like we're all alone. At least it does for me. We don't talk much about loss and grief, which is weird because they are among the most universal of human experiences.

So how do we keep moving forward without forgetting the moments and memories and the people we miss? When you lose a parent at a young age, it gives you this kind of urgency for life, like this is it, and you don't take anything for granted, you know? In my new podcast, I'll be talking with people whose insights and humor are helping me as I go through this grieving process that all of us will go through at some point. Pain's part of life, just no two ways about it. Loss is part of life, there's no two ways about it. In fact, I've met people who have not had much pain in their lives, who haven't suffered

much, and they seem to be the more miserable people that I've ever met. It's a podcast about the people we lose, the things they leave behind, and how we can live on with loss and with love. All There Is with me, Anderson Cooper, coming this fall. So, Anderson, are you an if-I-dier? What do you mean? Do you think, like, if I die? No, I'm like when I die. You're a when-I-dare.