The Jordan Harbinger Show - 584: Anderson Cooper | The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) is a broadcast journalist, political commentator, 18-time Emmy Award winner, and author of Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. What We Discuss with Anderson Cooper: How Anderson got his start in broadcast journalism without relying on his famous, wealthy family connections. Why experiencing the loss of a parent early in life drew Anderson toward learning how to survive in extreme circumstances and report in places torn by conflict. What growing up scrutinized by media in the wake of family tragedy taught Anderson about being an empathetic journalist from the other side of the lens. How Anderson harnesses his self-described innate awkwardness for establishing rapport with people who have already been interviewed from every angle (like Eminem). What a real journalist is prepared to do during a breaking news segment when the teleprompter goes dark. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/584 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I'm telling you, when the lights go out and there's no air condition, and it's really friggin' hot, and you don't have food, and there's crazy stuff going on around you, you've become a different person very, very quickly. Sometimes you become the person that you never thought you be. You become a superhero, and you help other people, and you risk your own life to help other people. Some of the people who thought they would be the heroes end up punching women in the face in order to scale a wall to get to safety. all of which I've seen. You don't know who you are until everything is at jeopardy. Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional Russian chess grandmaster, former cult member or drug trafficker.

Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a great way to tell your friends about it, and I always appreciate it when you do that. Check out our episode starter packs. These are top episodes organized by topic. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Jordan Harbinger.com slash start is where you can find him or send somebody else to go find him. We've got our Spotify playlist there now as well. Today on the show, Anderson Cooper, 18 Emmys. Not bad, man. His career path has banned Burma, Somalia, Iraq, Syrivo, filming everything on a home video camera,

essentially, and doing it all alone in the beginning. That's quite the career path. And those are the early days, covered wars, tsunamis, even some of the worst and best of humanity. Today, we go deep on war, humanity, and inhumanity, as well as the state of the media today. Now, I know a lot of people don't agree with his politics. They can't stand him, but this is not a political show. And there's a reason for that, because we can learn from everyone. The man has a fascinating career. This is a fascinating conversation. And if you're wondering how I manage to book guests like this, it's because of my network. And I've got creators like this all the time. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way,

most of the guests you hear on the show, subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's Anderson Cooper. I heard you played Celebrity Jeopardy, and you got creamed by Cheech Marin, which is actually, first of all, if people don't know who Cheech and Chong are, go ahead and Google. But you wouldn't think Cheech, would be a trivia guy or like an academic sort of guy at all? He is so friggin smart and also has such good buzzer theory and is so quick on the buzzer that, but he's really smart guy. He's a really a fascinating guy.

I will say I played now four times. I won twice and I lost twice. So I feel like I, yeah. But when I lost, I mean, to lose to Cheech Marin, I got really cocky because I had won the first time and I'd crushed them. And then my second time I was invited on, it was Cheech. I was like, I got this. Yeah.

And he just destroyed me. Like, look, you've been all over the world knee deep in the news for decades, which you would think, like, would make for pretty good jeopardy skills, which you have, but it's also possible that she smoked a lot of marijuana and watched a lot more jeopardy than you did over the years. Oh, I just thought the synapses would be slow, but they weren't. The next time I was on, I was against Tom Friedman of the New York Times, you know, Pulitzer Prize winner.

Yeah. So that's a good comeback. But it is kind of, there was something in there. I was like, that can't be right. That's a typo for sure. And I looked it up in a few other places. And no, that was it. I thought it was like one of those troll posts.

Yeah, no. That was hard to get over. Yeah, that was the tough one. A lot of people assume that because you come from what I guess might be termed American royalty, that you didn't really have to work that hard to get where you are. And I know this is untrue and it's an insulting insinuation, so I apologize for that. But surely you've heard this before, right? Yeah, my entire life.

Yeah. Absolutely. It's not insulting. I mean, it totally makes sense. You know, my mom was Gloria Vanderbilt. And obviously, the family that she was born into was just ludicry. rich, wealthy. My great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who made two fortunes, one based on steamships, one on railroads after starting out, dropping out of school 11 and ferrying supplies

on a little boat. You know, he died with $100 million, which in 1877 meant that he controlled one out of every $20 in circulation. He had more money than the U.S. Treasury at the time. So $100 million doesn't even sound like a lot today. You know, I mean, it's a huge amount. But back then it was just nobody could believe it. And the crazy thing is his son, who he had mocked and ridiculed his whole life, inherited all the money, and he doubled it in eight years. And then he died. And then the subsequent generations just started spending.

Yeah, I guess that's kind of how it works. I wanted to bring it up, though, because a lot of people are like, oh, he has a trust fund, he's a Vanderbilt. Of course, CNN was like, hey, get that wealthy guy, float him on over here and get us some eyeballs. And it really wasn't like that. Yeah, I did not have a trust fund. My parents early on made me clear. My mom had inherited money. She was born in 1924. She inherited a couple of million dollars in 1941. But she did a pretty good job of going through that throughout the course of her life. She mastered that. And she made her own money and designer jeans and stuff in the 70s and 80s. But she and my dad, who grew up poor on a farm in Mississippi, they made very clear to me that my college was being paid for. And I certainly lived in a very privileged surroundings and circumstances. But that, I after college, I'd be on my own and I'd be expected to make my own way. They didn't go into the details of, well, there just is no trust fund.

There is no, and your mom is spending so much money, there's not going to be any. But I knew by that point, you know, that the ship was not necessarily all that steady. So you start your own kind of, I mean, this is before social media well before it. So you've kind of got this, what I assume is a giant bulky camera. What's the opposite of like a home video camera kind of pre-handicam? and you're like the batteries as big as a brick, right? And you got like three of those in a backpack, and you're like, oh, let me go to Bosnia.

Al Franken used to do on the old giant live, this thing, it was like a one-man mobile satellite uplink unit. He had like a satellite dish on his head and he would broadcasting. I wasn't quite that technologically savvy, but they did have a little bit smaller cameras. They were very close to being VHS. Yeah, it was 1991. I couldn't get a job at ABC or CBS. I thought my very nascent career in broadcasting

was never going to get started because I just couldn't get a job. It couldn't get hired. There were hiring freezes. And I got a job at a thing called Channel One, which was a show seen in high schools and middle schools across the country. I was a fact checker.

And then after six months, I was like, you know, I want to get out there. I want to be a reporter. So they wouldn't let me. So I just had one of the, the director kindly made me a laminated press card, which was totally made up. Yeah, so fake media pass, basically.

Yes, and I borrowed one of their cameras, a small little camera. I ended up sneaking into Burma, Myanmar, and hooked up some students fighting the Burmese government. I shot a story. And then I ended up moving to Somalia in the early days of the famine, August of the 92, where about 1,000 people were dying a day of starvation and fighting, and it was before the U.S. got involved, before Blackhawk down. I spent time there and ended up just spending the next two or three years of going to war zones and disasters, Bosnia, Rwanda, South Africa, wherever the U.S.

there was fighting or conflict. Yeah, you spent your life chasing some of the worst of humanity, disasters, human stories. I wonder, did you grow up feeling isolated from that because you had sort of grown up with some wealth or privilege? Did you feel isolated from the rest of humanity? I'm kind of wondering what the appeal was. No, actually. I mean, I think, you know, one's perception from the outside is probably very different than the reality of what, you know, for everybody, what one's life is. My dad died when I was 10. And when you're 10, your dad dies, the world seems to be a very scary place. And despite, you know, having a nice bed to sleep in, my mom drank and my brother ended up jumping off our balcony in front of my mom when he was 23 and I was

21. So, you know, there were certainly issues and concerns and fears in that I grew up with. And I was very concerned about how people survive and how I survive. And I was fascinated by countries that people didn't pay much attention to. I grew up reading a lot about Central Africa, Zaire, Congo, Rwanda, and I wanted to go to the most extreme places and teach myself that I could survive in any circumstances. When you lose a parent early on, I wanted to go places where other people had experienced loss and other people were surviving with it. And I wanted to understand how I could survive in the world. And I didn't really go to be a reporter. I went because I'd studied these places. I'd spent a lot of time fascinated by Africa. But I wanted to hear

other people's stories and that I thought could help me survive. So you're not like an adrenaline junkie. It's almost, this is more like, can I make it in Africa? Not escapism. A lot of my own travels are kind of escapism, but I was also testing myself like many young men do. And not to go all Sigmund Freud on you, but a lot of that stuff is there's a lot of thought about kids who lose their fathers feeling a loss of control in their lives. Right, of course. And then trying to regain that control sometimes by shoplifting and other times by going to Congo, right? Yeah, regaining control of my life was really my mission from the time I was 10 to, you know, 54, which I'm now still 54. So, like, yeah, it was, I started taking survival courses first, like the National Outdoor Leadership School.

I did a month in the Wooden River Range in Wyoming. I did a month in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico in a kayaking expedition. I started working at 13 to earn money. And I wanted to put myself in extreme circumstances and know that no matter what happened, even if New York City, was attacked, I would know how to operate in that environment. What I discovered, which I hadn't expected, but I discovered the power of learning other people's stories and what went from a personal thing of wanting to just go to these places and experience things, you know, it opened my mind and it opened my heart and I realized I can tell people's stories and people whose stories

have been ignored or forgotten or who are dead on the side of the road and no one will remember them because there's no photographs that exist of them, I found the power of kind of of bearing witness. So it started off as kind of like Anderson Cooper, Doomsday Prepper, and you turned into a reporter slowly over time. Yeah, very quickly. I mean, I shot my first story in Burma with these kids fighting the government, and I knew that was it. I called up a friend afterward. I was like, this is the most incredible thing. Like, I showed up in these people's lives and, you know, was able to convince them to let me hang out with them and tell their story.

And it feels incredible. And after that, I was like, this is what I have to do. Does it ever feel unfair that you can, you're in a war zone, but you're going to leave in three days and the guys that are protecting you and getting shot at every day are stuck there. The people that you're covering are stuck there. They don't get to come back home and eat ramen at your favorite place.

Yeah. Is that in the back of your mind at all? It's in the front of my mind. I mean, it's a really weird, it's really weird, the whole situation is weird. I mean, it's weird to be telling stories about people who die in front of you. It's weird to go into a children's ward and intensive care unit in Niger and look around the room to find, okay, in order to how to tell the story of this horrible thing that is happening, the way news is made is you need to find characters and you need to tell a story. And I cannot tell you the internal conflicts one has of you're in a hospital setting and you know, I mean, what you're looking for is somebody who's going to be dying.

in the next two hours and so that you can be there and you can tell the story of this baby who's just died. And then it's a matter of, you know, talking to the mother at the lowest moment of her life if she's willing to talk. And I work very hard to be incredibly sensitive and to not intrude on anybody. And I found that most people want their stories told.

They want others to know about their little baby or their mother who died. People want somebody to know the name of their loved one and pay attention. So, yeah, it's incredibly strange. And, you know, I was in Sarajevo, my first trip to Sarajevo in Bosnia in the war, you know, Sarajevo was completely surrounded in order to get in. You had to drive down the Mount Igman Road, which was considered at that point the most

dangerous road in the world because Serbian snipers would shoot cars and, you know, you'd be passing by the wrecks of vehicles that didn't make it down the road. But, yeah, I'd spend, you know, a week in Bosnia in Sarajevo, and I was able to leave. and everyone else is trapped in the city. Yeah, the siege of Sarajevo had to be something that, obviously, you'll never forget that. I assume you get attached to people that you meet in situations like that just because it is so horrible.

That was almost unique, I would say uniquely horrible in history, but really there's so many horrible things that you covered just in the past couple of decades like Rwanda that it's not really accurate statement. Well, no, I mean, Sarajevo was horrific. I mean, it went on, you know, the world watched. It happened from, you know, 92, 93, 94. piece of steel was made in 95. But yeah, it was just horrific. You would go and you could know

what corners to go and likely see somebody being picked off by a sniper at some point during that day. Or you just go to the hospital and you would see, you know, people being brought in, children, men, women who had been hit with 50 caliber shots from far away. The way the media tortured your own family for a long time, especially after your brother's death, makes me wonder why you would join those ranks yourself. You know, you'd think the way they covered that, you would just never want anything to do with journalism ever. Yeah.

I never really watched the coverage of it. I can't tell you I, when my brother died 1988, July 22nd, and, you know, the next day, my mom and I went to funeral him to view his body, and somehow the reporters camped outside our house, and it was obviously a very public death and a big deal. the pages of post and everything like that. And there were reporters waiting outside the funeral home to get video of us going in. And I remember in that moment sort of holding on to my mom, walking her to the side entrance and people running to take pictures. And I remember hating

the camera people who were doing that. I subsequently, as I look back, obviously, they had a job to do. And, you know, I knew it then that they had a job to do. And I didn't hate them personally. But I just, I know what it's like to be on the other ends of that camera. lens and it often is a not a good experience and it often leaves you feeling a whole range of emotions and I'm tried to be very aware of that I mean I don't try to be I am excruciatingly aware of that when I'm talking to somebody if I point a camera at somebody I work really hard because I do know what it's like to be on the other end of the lens and I don't want to make somebody else feel like that how do you stay professional in the face of tsunami disasters and look I realize this is a job

but you're still human, unless, of course, you listen to people on YouTube who think you're an alien lizard in a human shell. Right, yes, that's come later, though. That's been an evolution into a lizard person. How do you compartmentalize this sort of thing so that it doesn't haunt you later on? I mean, it seems like it would have to.

Like, you are back home eating your favorite noodles, and you're just like, you just pause and you find yourself thinking about a masquerave that you witnessed three days prior. Yeah, and I think that's the way it should be. I don't think it's something that you should be be able to go to and then come back and forget and, you know, and just think of it as, oh, it's just, yeah, so one of those terrible places I've been. And I think that's probably

maybe mentally some sort of a healthier way to do it, but I don't think it's the right way to do it. And I don't think of what you're interested in is, you know, doing justice to the things you're seeing. I think you have to allow yourself to be horrified and scared and miserable and devastated by it. And yeah, when I fall asleep at night, I see the faces of many people. whose names, some of them I remember, some of them I don't, but it's impossible not to. And I think you should be changed by the things that you see. And I think if you're not changed by the things you see,

then you kind of have no business going to these places because you're not going to be able to tell the stories of people with any of the respect or sensitivity that I think that they deserve. Do you ever get desensitized or do you ever find yourself doing that maybe in the past? Because there's a report or a quote from you, I don't know exactly what it is, maybe Rwanda, where you started to see these mass graves and you'd say, oh, only a dozen bodies,

that's not that bad, you know? Yeah, that's definitely a danger and it's definitely something I've come across and ultimately my decision was I need to do a bigger variety. I mean, I was doing pretty much extensively that stuff early on for the first two or three years and I was like, you know what?

I finally, after that time, realized this could actually be a career for me. This isn't just something I'm doing for personal reasons. And I realize if it is going to be a career, I knew a couple of people who had just exclusively done combat reporting, and most of them do not end up very well. They're either out of the business. They've had serious issues with family and their lives, or they've gotten into other work. And so I felt like, you know what, I at least need

to do a greater variety of stuff so that this is not the only thing I'm seeing and thinking about. But yeah, it's very easy at times to slip into, I mean, it's natural to kind of shut yourself down and just view it as a job and just, you know, go to a place and try not to be moved by the things you're seeing. You know, maybe it makes it easier to fall asleep in night. It's not something I allow myself to do. And when I find myself doing it, I think, okay, I need to take a break or whatever it may be. But I did, I had an incident in Rwanda, which was, I went to Rwanda right for the election of Mandela. And on election day, I was in Soweto, less standing in line. It was just an incredible day when Nelson Mandela was elected president, and the genocide was occurring, and I went there,

and the juxtaposition of those two things was very difficult to deal with. And yeah, I was, after I was shooting some stuff, I was in a place where a bus had been hit. There were several people laying on the ground, and the liquid had basically been taken out of them already from the sun, because they'd been out there while, and their bodies were decomposing. And I was very interested in how the skin of this little girl's hand, the skin had peeled off like a glove peeling off halfway. And I took my personal camera and I took a picture of it. And someone I was with took a picture of me doing that and sent it to me later on once I got back and said, actually the back that says, this is for when you become famous. And I actually have it up in my office because it's a sign to

me that I had crossed a line. It's a sign to me that in that moment, I was not looking at these four bodies as human beings, I was looking at them as, wow, isn't that interesting what happens to the skin in the sun after they've been here for two weeks? And I think there's an important lesson for me, it was never allow yourself to think that way again. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Anderson Cooper. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps the lights on around here. All those codes and URLs, they can be tough to remember. I know you're driving, jogging. We put them all in one place. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is where you can find it. We've redone that whole page.

Let me know what you think. If you have any problems with it, it should be easy, even on your phone. Please consider supporting those who support this show and make it possible. And don't forget, we have worksheets for many episodes. If you want some of the drills and exercises talked about during the show, those are all in one easy place. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now, back to Anderson Cooper. How do you view your role overseas? I know awareness and generating attention for a crisis is obviously really important, but in the moment when you're staring into like a starving orphan child's eyes, you must wish that you could do more than bust out your camera. Yeah, obviously, you know, we're often in these situations where now we're able to get to places

faster than a relief group does or faster, you know, in some cases than, you know, whatever military force is going to be coming in, you know, that takes a while to rev up. We're able to get the really, really quickly and broadcasts from really virtually anywhere now. And that presents you're with really some weird, difficult situations of, I'm not a doctor. I don't have the skills to actually help people who are in medical need. I have limited supplies, probably. myself, you know, you do what you can. I happily give away, you know, food because I generally think in most places, if you have cash, you can get food pretty much anywhere if you are privileged and have enough money to pay for it at exorberant prices as the markets have

exploded. Even in a famine in Somalia, there were restaurants, you know, selling pasta to warlords. So, yeah, you give away what you can, you know, I can't tell you how many times it's somebody using my sat phone in order to call their loved one to tell them that they're still alive, that they're not dead yet, or to tell them at least where they are if their house and everything has been destroyed after a hurricane, or is giving somebody a lift to, you know, taking them to a medical center. That's often the best thing you can do. I mean, but yeah, it is an unfair, you know, you talk about inequality. The inequality is very much on display. I've arrived in this place. I will be leaving in a matter of days or weeks or months, I'll be on in one of those airplanes flying way

overhead. And that mobility, that freedom, that mobility and money give you, it's really startling and painful. Yeah, I remember being in Somalia, you know, in the midst of a really, really bad situation of town called Bidoa, a relief flight came in and dropped off supplies, and they gave me a lift back to Kenya to Nairobi. And I showered and I tried to wash, you know, everything off because I'd been in burial centers and feeding centers. And I hadn't really eaten in a couple of days. And I went to this Italian restaurant in Nairobi. You know, they had like cutlery and nice stuff. It was just surreal. I was just by myself. And as I was just about to start to eat, I suddenly smelled Somalia again. And I was like, you know, where is that coming from? And then I looked

down and I realized there was blood on my shoes and on my boots. And I hadn't washed my boots. I hadn't thought to do that. And it was just such this strange moment of two hours ago I was in this place and now I'm clean and eating in this thing. And then there's the reminder of it. Right. Like you tracked in a little bit of the worst place on earth at that particular point in time until like a decent Italian restaurant where you were planning to, where you could relax. You could put your phone on the table and loosen your belt a little bit and have some food. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is surreal. That is extremely surreal. When you're in a war zone and you're seeing sort of the bottom base level of humanity and the worst things that humans are even capable of get done in these places, surely there must be some things, some maybe acts of kindness and compassion that don't really make the headlines as much because it's not as interesting for the gawkers. Yeah, you see that all the time. You know, you expect to see like horror and hatred and brutality and yet you also see compassion and kindness and caring. And that's what's so. you never know exactly how people are going to react to something.

You know, we all think, oh, well, you know, if I was there, this is what I would do, or if a school shooter walked into my classroom, I'd attack the guy. And I, you know, even though they didn't have a gun, I, you know, no one knows until you've been in that situation, like, you can intellectually think you know who you are. But I'm telling you, when the lights go out and there's no air condition and it's really friggin' hot and you don't have food and there's, you know, stuff going on around, crazy stuff going on around you, you've become a different person very,

very quickly. Sometimes you become the person that you never thought you be. You become a superhero and you help other people and you risk your own life to help other people. Some of the people who thought they would be the heroes end up, you know, punching women in the face in order to scale a wall to get to safety, all of which I've seen. Like, you just see that. You don't know who you are until everything is at jeopardy.

Everything is, yeah. Is there any way that being a higher profile personality who you are now, you know, maybe in the 90s, it was kind of like, eh, you're just a young kid doing stuff for some channel I've never heard of. Now that you're a higher profile personality, there's probably people, even in sort of places you never thought that are like, hey, they're the guy from the TV that plays at the hotel where I drive cars or whatever it is. Yeah. Has that affected your work in any way that didn't happen before? Like, does it make it easier to get your job done or harder? It cuts both ways. I mean, I don't really blend in well wherever I go. I'm like the, the, most translucent person on the planet. You're shining in the sun.

Yeah, it's a little off-putting and startling. And CNN is everywhere now and pretty much wherever I go. I mean, even in, I'll go to, I really love, like, DRC Congo and Rwanda. I love Central Africa. You know, and there are places I'll go that. I did not think anybody would recognize me, but it does happen because they know it from CNN. Even if they don't know my name, they know it's like, oh, you're the failed guy from

CNN. But sometimes it's, I was, it was me and my team were the first team on the ground in Haiti after the earthquake. And we only got there faster than others because I knew, I know, it's too born to get into it, but I knew there was a flight to Santa Domingo, and I knew we could cross over. And when I get to this tiny airport in Santa Domingo, you know, to try to figure out a way to get into Port-au-Prince, and there's only one helicopter, and it's about to take off. And it's Dominican government official who recognizes me from CNN. He's like, oh, we got a seat, come. So I just pop in the seat of this helicopter, and we take off, and I get to get, you know, land in Port-of-Prince

20 minutes later. So that wouldn't happen if I was still the guy at Channel 1 that nobody'd ever heard of. At the same time, the thing I loved about being, you know, not recognizable back then is you could show up in a place and nobody knew anything about you. Nobody had any preconceived notions of who you were. Nobody knew if you were gay or straight. Sometimes if they know you're gay, they don't respond in the way you might hope they would. If they, whatever their political beliefs are, maybe they, whatever idea they have about me does not align with their beliefs. And so, you know, a lot of people will have a preconceived notion if I show up somewhere of who I am or what I'm about. And there's not really anything I can do about it at this point. So it can kept both ways. But for the

most part, I try to be a decent human being and a good person and I try to relate to people as people. And I'm genuinely interested, even if somebody who I may not like personally or, you know, maybe we don't, you know, want to vote for the same person, I'm genuinely interested. in understanding their perspective. And my job is to kind of make a story, usually, to help other people understand their perspective. I've heard that actually that Rwanda is one of your favorite countries speaking of Rwanda. And I'm going there actually next year. I'm supposed to.

Oh, no kidding. Wow. Yeah. I'm wondering what you love about it. I've got kind of a- Are you going to see the gorillas? Yeah, that's what everyone does. But there's extra time.

So it's not going to be like one week with the, you know, gorillas. I think that's like a day or an afternoon. I actually don't know. So how long are you there for? Probably like seven to 10 days. Oh, that's a long time in Rwanda. Yeah, it is, yeah. Rwanda small.

So the Mountain Gorillas, you know, they've done an amazing job. I mean, I've been going to Rwanda since I was 17, and they have really, you know, protected the Mountain Gorillas, and it's obviously become a major source of tourism and importance for them. And it is the most extraordinary animal experience you can have in the wild. I mean, there's no place else you like that. I mean, you can do it in DRC Congo, but it's less organized and a little riskier. Yeah.

That is a great experience. The Genocide Museum is really worth a visit. There's a church where they're there. There was a massacre that's worth it, is it? But it's a fascinating country. I mean, Paul Kagami is the leader. He was part of the RPF, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, which they're the ones who actually stopped the genocide when the international community wasn't doing it, and France was setting

up protection zones for the people who committed the genocide. You know, he's a controversial figure. He's sort of beloved in the West. There are a bunch of, like, former Rwandan generals who have mysteriously been assassinated in parking lots in Cape Town where they're living in exile. And Rwanda somehow does export large. amounts of minerals that they don't actually have in their own country. So they get those minerals from Eastern DRC Congo that control a lot of mines perhaps illegally. So a lot of interesting stuff.

Yeah, that stuff does interest me, but I'm also a weird traveler. Like people will say, why would, oh, where did you go? And I'll say Bosnia. And they're like, oh, you do mean some other place? And it's like, no, I was in an underground tunnel outside Sarajevo looking at how they snuck in and out of the country under. Oh, yeah. I know that tunnel. Yeah. You were probably and it was when it was in use, not when it was a tourist attraction, though, right? Yeah, well, that's true, yeah. But do you know the Mount Igman Road? I don't know what it is now.

Oh, man. I don't even know if it's still there. Anyway, I don't. But yeah, there were limited ways into Sarajevo for a long time, and it was always very risky. Rwanda is fascinating. They also have a national cleaning day. Don't bring any plastic bags because they confiscate them from your, they rifle through your bags in the airport, and you think they're looking for, like, drugs and stuff.

They're looking for single-use plastic bags because that's not allowed. Wow. So the idea is to bring things. thicker plastic bags that you can use more than once or just stick with fabric. Stick with fabric, yeah. You'll do much better. So you've seen a lot of aid organizations and things like that on the ground. I'm surely you must have an opinion on who's doing a really good job out there between,

like on one end, the United Nations and maybe on the other end, Doctors Without Borders or something like that. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's hard to kind of generalize. I think a lot of it, I tend to try to look country by country. I certainly think Doctors Without Borders does extraordinary work. I've done a lot of stuff with them in the field. I've seen them in the field. You know, sometimes they're kind of arrogant because a lot of them are French.

But, and also, if you're like an actual doctor saving lives, I mean, sometimes they really want reporters there because they're in places that they're desperate for people to know what's happening. Sometimes they're up to their elbows and amputations. And like the idea of another reporter coming and asking them questions is annoying. So I cut them a wide berth and give them a lot of slack. But I love Doctors Without Borders. I just think I've met some extraordinary, extraordinary people that guy named Milton Tectonitis. who in Niger did unbelievable work. And I've seen a ton of individuals at the UN and elsewhere

who are really trying to do good work. Often with bureaucracies, it's difficult and it's not as fast as they would like it to be. How do you get interview subjects to relax, especially when things are actually a bit awkward or uncomfortable? You were walking around Detroit with Eminem, buying these Diet Cokes and just like standing kind of awkwardly inside a Burger King or something.

And even he was like, yeah, this is awkward, right? this isn't going in. Yeah, that was, I do remember that shoot, actually. There were a lot of awkward moments in that shoot. I really liked him. And he, I think, I was told that they were very pleased with the end product because they, for an Eminem interview, it was, he said a lot of stuff that was interesting. But, you know, I used to make me incredibly nervous.

And any, I mean, I'm so awkward as it is. I mean, I guess in that sense, I'm used to kind of an awkwardness around me. So it doesn't phase me too much. I don't worry about it as much anymore. I do want to make the subject. But, you know, it really depends on what kind of a profile of it is. If it's Eminem, you know, I don't need to really work to win him over in any kind of sense because he's been interviewed so many times.

And that's not necessarily something. He really, I mean, he doesn't want me trying to, like, you know, probe his inner psyche and become friends with him. Like, we're not going to become friends and hang out. I mean, if somehow over the course of this, something, you know, you become friendly, there are people that has happened. I do hang out with him. But for the most part, it's, you know, it's an interview he's doing, he's got a reason to do it, he's got an album to promote, and I understand that. And as long as the interview itself, at least as long as the person shows up for

the interview, I don't mean just physically shows up. I mean, you know, knows that they're doing a 60 minutes interview and we're actually going to have a real conversation. Then that's all I really care about now. Before, you know, if it's somebody who doesn't know any amount of TV, if it's somebody who's incredibly nervous to do it, I will work as hard as I need to without trying to look like I'm working to just make them comfortable and understand my perspective and what I'm coming from and what interests me about them. I have no problem explaining to somebody, you know, I really am interested in this aspect and this and you know this. There's nothing worse than being interviewed by somebody who doesn't care or who has just written out 20 questions that they worked really hard on,

which is nice, but they're so concerned about getting to those 20 questions that they're not listening to what you're saying at all. Because when I started out, I had done that many times as an interviewer. Of course. I'd written out my thing. Better than not having anything, that's for sure. Right. Exactly.

The problem with that is the person you're talking to can see that you are really just waiting for them to shut up. So you can ask your next question. Because that's how I always was early on. I'd be like just watching the person's lips move and like checking the clock. And as soon as they stopped, I would just ask the next question. And what I didn't realize is the other person can read this if they're, particularly if they've done this a little bit.

Yeah. And it's like a boner killer. It's just not, I don't know if you said that. No, that's great. We're leaving it in for sure. Okay, fine. But it's just like it crushes one. Like as somebody who's being interviewed, you want to at least be.

kind of seen or heard or felt. And to realize that the person is just kind of checking things off, I end up shutting down and just then providing perfunctory answers and stuff like that. I think it's very human to do that, especially if you're talking about, like, when you were covering the famine in Niger, if you're like, so your infant son has just passed away, how do you feel? And then there's this long sort of story behind it about how that was her only child or her last child and now she has no children and then you're like, I don't know, what are you going to do now? You know, it's just like sort of this disconnected question. Yes. And also, by the way, I have tried in my career to never ask the how do you feel question because I know you were just using that as a

as a bad example, yeah. But it is a question that is so, I mean, I guess there are times when I formulated in that way, but it's just such a often, you don't need to ask a mother who's just lost their child, how does it feel? I think we all have a general sense. There's other ways you can, what you're trying to do in that question is elicit an emotional response, which is not necessary either and kind of inappropriate because I don't want to force somebody into an emotional response. So you can ask a whole bunch of questions around it without asking that question. And you can do it in a way that's, there's no way I'm going to do an interview with somebody whose child has just died. And I don't want to add to their torment in any way.

I want it to be on whatever that person wants to say. You know, I interviewed a lot of people who their child's killed in a school shooting or interviewed a lovely lady, Lynn McDonald, whose daughter, Grace, was six years old and killed at Sandy Hook. And she'd seen other interviews I'd done with people who were experienced loss. And she wanted to talk to me about her daughter. And, you know, that's, I don't know if it was two days, three days after her daughter has been killed. To be privileged enough to, you know, step into her pain and be with her in that the most devastating

moment of her life, you know, I take things like that very, very seriously. I want her to come out of it feeling that she has told people exactly what she wants to tell them, which in her case, was about grace and was about this little girl who we, who lived an extraordinary life in her time. It seems completely unnecessary to needle somebody for an emotional reaction, especially if you know you're already going to get one, like in that situation. You're going to get some emotional reaction just due to the subject matter. So trying to kind of highlight things more for them is actually just cruel at that point. It's awful and it, I mean, it bounces back on you. It makes you look craven and I've always tried not to express emotion and stuff. I mean, I'm a wasp, so I was

taught to bury my emotions deep down inside, which I still think is the healthy thing to do. But if you do that, they do bubble up in weird times. And, you know, with the times that I have in my mind, unfortunately expressed, you know, teared up or voice cracked or whatever on air, which has happened a number of times over the years, as long as it is real and not some sort of, I get the sense sometimes when I see some people on television screaming or yelling, which is, for some reason, that emotion is totally acceptable on TV and expected and people have made whole careers out of it, but a genuine emotion is considered surprising. I do get a sense. You can tell, you know, the, I'm rambling now, But the camera lens is a really thin little piece of glass, and it really does transmit truth.

It really transmits who you are for better or for worse. But the audience at home watching does get a sense of who you are and listening as well, I think. That's what's fascinating about doing this kind of stuff, the television, radio, podcasts. It's an opportunity to see into another person. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Anderson Cooper. We'll be right back. And now for the rest of my conversation with Anderson Cooper. Do you ever read social media posts about you or your work?

Because there's, I made the mistake of doing that about your work and I felt bad for you because it's so intense. Yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't know which social media post you're talking about. Twitter, for example. Yeah. Yeah, I don't do Twitter. I used to do Twitter and I used to respond to people and, you know, have pithy, snorkey response. And then at a certain point, I was like, what am I doing?

Yeah. I mean, this is insane. And my life has improved considerably since I stopped really looking at Twitter. I don't even really look at it anymore, even for the news folks that I follow. I will in a pinch if there's a breaking situation and I'm watching CNN. I'm breaking news and I'm looking for like the local police department in the town where something happens. I'll go to Twitter.

But for the most part, yeah, I'm just really happier without it. My mom always said, she never read anything about herself, which was pretty much true. And I've managed really not to read about myself as well. Yeah, I forgot you had kind of an expert, live-in expert who could be like, oh, negative, oh, you hate Twitter, 140 negative characters. Here's a pile of articles about how we are a terrible family and everyone you're related to is awful. And for my mom, I mean, my mom was, her birth made the headlines, and she was removed from the custody of her own mother by courts in New York,

by the surrogate courts in New York based on a plot hatched by her nanny and her grandmother to have her taken away from her mother and given to a member of the Vanderbilt so she could be raised and live as a Vanderbilt instead of being carry-around hotel rooms in Europe and with a mother who was not a Vanderbilt and didn't have money and was very carefree. I read the book that you wrote with her and I thought she has just, by the grace of God come out as a loving mother. Like she had her faults and everything, but wow.

I mean, her upbringing was like straight to sociopath, but she didn't have the genes for her. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah. Her parents, you know, she was born in 1924 and then her mom and dad take off for a six-month honeymoon because that's what you do. Like none of that whole, you know, wow, there's a newborn baby here. Let's stick around for it. Right.

It was an insane thing. And it really, it altered the course of her life and it impacted the course of her life. And she spent really her whole life kind of re-reported. playing scenarios from her childhood and reliving them and kind of rethinking them to make them into some sort of order. There's a Dorothy Parker quote, which is those born to the storm find the calm very boring. You know, my mom was born to the storm and was relentlessly restless her entire life. So anytime she wanted like house the white picket fence, but when she had it, she blew it up because it worked for like a week or two, but and the restlessness came back.

Yeah, she really needed a vacation instead of a... Suburban. Yes, exactly. What do you think, in brief, of course, of the state of the media right now? I mean, distrust is so high. A lot of it is earned by a lot of these sort of fake, or I guess they're real journalists, but it's crossing a lot of lines. The rest of it is done by extremists or politicians.

But the quest for accuracy and the quest for truth, it should sort of be near sacrosanct, but obviously that's just not the case anymore at all. You know, I mean, look, there are so many different kinds of outlets that, you know, under the rubric of media or press, that it's a little hard to kind of figure out. You know, it was interesting writing this book. I did a lot of research in the old press accounts of the Vanderbilt's, and for instance, Cornelius Vanderbilt's death, you know, the richest man in the world dying at who he's going to leave the money to. There were reporters camped outside his house for months waiting for him to die. The press accounts of his actual death, they're all

completely different. I mean, the New York Times is that it was a kind of, it was the model Victorian death of hymns being sung while beloved family members were around the bed. You know, other accounts are that he's dying of venereal excesses and screaming and, you know, they're giving him opium and he never really went to church in his life. So was he really singing hymns. So it was interesting to me to just kind of realize, you know, there have been problems with accuracy and the rush to get things into print and, you know, reporters not doing their jobs for as long as there have been reporters.

I do think, obviously, the quest for there are facts, and we live in an age where, you know, everyone's told that they can have their own truth, which is fine. But I do believe that there are things which are true and are not true. And I think that's what reporters, that's what news should be about. I'm not interested in newscasts where the person is screaming their opinion and forcing their opinion on other people. I try to avoid that. You know, there have been times in the last administration when the lies were coming so fast,

that it was very hard to figure out a way to report on them without pointing out that, you know, you can't just say, well, the White House says this and others say this. At a certain point, when the administration itself is just in many ways based on laws, you have to kind of stop and constantly point it out. And that sort of contributes the erosion of the belief of objectivity because people say, well, look, you're always just attacking when in fact, you're actually just just focusing on specific things people have said. Yeah, it is tough that we have all this tribalism now,

and it's like if you're anti-their religion or you're anti-the-team, it's more like a religion, honestly, now, from the look of it, well, from Twitter. I mean, look, there's reasonable people in the middle. They're just not as loud as the people on the edges, which is also unfortunate and a side effect of social media. But it does erode. That's why in a revolution, the first people who are killed or the moderates,

because, you know, in a revolution, the extremists help each other, because they can feed off each other, they can blame the other. The moderates who are trying to just make peace and be sensible, they're usually the ones who are attacked first because they're not helping either extremist cause.

Well, I'm screwed then, I think, because that's where I live, right, in the middle. And it's like, hey, both sides have some points. Both sides are making some mistakes. Here they are. And so both sides are like, you know what? One star for this shitty podcast, Jordan. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly the problem. Now, on 60 minutes, when you guys come on and you say, I'm Anderson Cooper, I'm Leslie Stahl, how many, this is a dumb question, just so you know, how many times do you have to retake that? Because it's weird to say that. I tried it in the mirror. It didn't go out. Yeah.

It is very weird. Yeah. So it's funny, it's not a bad question because I think it's really funny, actually. The first time I did it was, I think 2006 was the first time I was asked to do the Ims. And it took me a while because I, first of all, I kept giggling every time I started. couldn't believe I was on 60 Minutes. I couldn't believe I had been asked to like start to contribute some stories. I grew up watching this thing. I idolized Bob Simon and, you know, Mike Wallace and all these people, Bradley. I was like, I need a minute here. Like, this is big for me. This is crazy.

And you're sitting in front of a green screen, which is, that's how they do it in the six minutes thing so that the clock is, you know, behind you. Oh, right. And you're just staring the camera. And it's, you know, a bunch of guys waiting to go on their lunch break. And you're doing, I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm, and, I mean, like, and once it gets in your head, you don't know how to do it. And then you try to think, I would you be like, I'm my boss. I'm Bob Simon. I'm Anderson Cooper, like to try to do it in a sentence where it would make sense.

And at a certain point, you're just like, do you have something like, for the first time, like, they literally counsel you. They're like, little more space between the I'm than your first name. You know, so it's like, I'm Anderson Cooper. But then that seems too much like, I'm Anderson Cooper. You know, and then you become obsessed with it. And every time I say it, I don't know how to say this. And I'm never happy with how it looks in the thing. I always feel like I still haven't gotten it.

That makes me feel a lot better because in the intro to the show, I say, hey, welcome to the Jordan Harbinger show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. And every time I go to my producer and he edits it out, I go, I was like, is that weird? Did that sound weird? And he's like, no, it never sounds weird. Just leave it. That sounded great.

You just saying that sounded great. I wish I had that cadence for the 60 minutes. Well, yeah. If I had to do it for real, then it would be different. Now it's fine. Now this throwaway version is fine. You nailed the I'm Anderson Cooper there, by the way, too, a one take, right? It's when you have to do it with the green screen and Leslie Stahl's going. Are we almost at lunch? Are you going to finish this? Yeah. It was funny. I was on Andy's show, Andy Cohen's show, watch what happens live two nights ago. And he did this game called Promptor Wars, which was, I didn't know he was going to do this. And that's which was basically, it was a war between him and I, just cold reading, something off the teleprompter, some weird story. And the prompter was moving too fast. It was just interesting to see, like, our different ways of reading.

I destroyed him. Of course. It was fun to see him squirm. There's got to be so many interesting things going on behind the scenes in a lot. live newsroom. I'm wondering if there's any sort of situation where you'd found, okay, the teleprompter broke. I'm not sure what happens next. We're live. There's a crap load of people watching. Yeah. What do you do? So I started anchoring. I'd never anchored before until I was probably 29 or so. And I was at ABC News and they had this overnight newscast called World News Now that no man, no people at

ABC watch. But a lot of people watched around the country because like nursing mothers, night shift workers, people coming home drunk from parties. And the slogan of the show was more insomniacs get their news from ABC World News now than anywhere else. They made me, I started filling in, and then they made me a full-time anchor. But I had never read a teleprompter. So that was the big learning curve.

But the show was on from like, I don't know, two to four a.m. in the morning. And so sometimes we had great teleprompter operators, and it was really a loose show. And we had a guy Willis who laughed really loud behind the camera, and that was part of the show. And it was nice. We like that.

But everybody falls asleep. one point or another when you're working on the overnight shift. And like, you'd have the camera, like the camera operator would fall asleep and the camera would just start moving up or the teleprompter would just stop because the teleprompter person had fallen asleep. And it was actually great training because what you learn is that the teleprompter is not something you can depend on. It's a touchstone in my mind. That it's something that is there to help you. But if the teleprompter goes blank at any point, you have to know everything. You have to know what you were about to say anyway. Ideally, you've written what you're about to say, so it's in your head. And even if you don't know

what was written, you have to know where you're going. So you can at least vamp to toss to a particular package and say who the reporter is. Because usually you have people in the ear, but when the teleprompter goes down, they're freaking out in the control room about whatever the technical snafu is their priority is not like go next to, you know, Kathy in Vermont or whatever it is. And that's actually why I like live news, real breaking news the most because, you know, you're doing a regular broadcast and all of a sudden something happens like, oh, we're getting a report, a plane crashed outside Boston, and they want you to start talking about it. And at first, you only have three lines of information. You know, we believe it's a Delta Airlines flight heading to

wherever. And the job then gets really interesting very quickly. And it's the most thrilling part of being an anchor and not because you have to have coherent conversation about something of which you have very little information and you can't be wrong about the information or if your information is, you're not sure how good it is because usually the first information in breaking things off and wrong. You have to couch it and make sure you point out that this is early reporting. You know, you very quickly try to bring other people in who you can have conversations about how planes go down, the safety record of this airline, whatever it may be. But that thing of suddenly you're on the air for 10 hours talking about this, and then new pieces of information come in drips and drabs. And your job is to,

you know, you're also aware that more people are coming in as viewers. So you have to update things for the new people coming in, working in the new information you have, but not doing it in the same way that you've been doing it to alienate the people who have already been there listening. So it's just an interesting, I always equated it to like, you know, if you're a kid at the beach and there's like a sand cliff that's been created by the tide going out, you know, running along the top of that sand cliff as a kid is really fun because the sand is collapsing, the cliff is collapsing beneath you as you go and the trick is to try to stay upright. That's what anchoring a breaking new situation is. It's, You're just trying to deliver information that's accurate in a coherent narrative and with very little information.

Well, I want to be respectful of your time. First of all, that's a fascinating look inside the newsroom that I really appreciate. It's something. I always wanted to do that. My mom, my tricky mom, I said, oh, I want to be like Dan Rather. That job looks so interesting. It was all his footage of him in Vietnam. And my mom goes, oh, journalists, they don't make any money. And she told me that because she didn't want me to do something dangerous. And now I'm like, wait a minute. I saw. Anderson Cooper's salary on Wikipedia. It might not be totally accurate, but it can't be out by that. Like, come on. I was like, Dan Radder, he's pretty minted. Yeah. Well, I think also Wikipedia said that my mom had $200 million that I was inheriting too. So, you corrected that record. If you read the book, you realize that's not quite right. Yeah, unfortunately for you, that's not quite right. Well, actually, I'm quite happy with that. You know what? It's better that way because inheritance like that, everyone would just go, oh, well, he was always going to have this. And it would just sort of wash away part of the correctability you've worked so hard to build for yourself.

Look, I think I don't believe in inherited money. I think it sucks the initiative out of kids. And I think parents think they're doing favor to their kids. My parents have made it clear early on that I would not have one. And I think it's great. Thank you so much for your time. Fascinating. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. My pleasure. As usual, I've got some thoughts on this episode. But before I get into that, here's a preview with a former undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Gambino crime family in New York for nearly three years, resulting in the arrest and conviction of 35 mobsters. And get this, he's not even Italian. Here's a bite.

Jordan, I've done everything. I mean, I have posed as a money laundry. I've worked as a drug dealer. I have worked as a transporter for drug dealers. I worked as a warehouse guy. The whole gamut. My career was 24 out of 26 years. Was solely dedicated working undercover. If I wasn't working for the FBI, I would have been investigated by the FBI. Exactly, yeah. Now, I walk in, I'm in the bar. Now there's a barmate there, good-looking young lady.

She's serving me a joke. What would you like? I usually my drink was give me a kettle, one martini, three olives, a glass of water on the side. I finished the drink. The guys come in. I'm going to go in my pocket, take out the big water. of money that knot with the rubber band on it. Bam, give her a hundred dollars. You're not a guy

who takes out a little leather wallet and he's going through the change or he's doing it. Can you imagine four gangs are sitting around going, let's split it up. I had the soup. He had to sandwich and french fries. What about the tech? Sometimes we get into bidding work. That goes, hey, your money's no good here. What are you doing? You're embarrassing me over here. What do you mean? You paid the land. Let me get to. Forget about it. You pay for it. If I would have gone in there and became a guy who had never a penny, never went into his wallet, never picked up a tab, never had a dime, never kicked up money, never gave tribute payment, that'd be on my ass, they throw me out. If you're with the mob, I say, hey, Jordan, you're on record with us. That means we protect you.

Nobody could shake you down. We could shake you down, but you're on record with us. For more, including tricks wise guys used to know who's legit and who's not, mob culture and the rules that. that govern the always upward flow of money, and how Jack became so trusted by the highest levels of the organization that they offered him the chance to become a made man. Check out episode 392 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Jack Garcia. That was an interesting conversation.

I almost did this same thing. When I was younger, I wanted to do the job of going into rough areas and producing things, but it didn't seem possible, and I did think he had to get hired by a news channel. And I wasn't a good writer, or at least I thought, I wasn't turned out that I was great when I didn't have to write like book reports or some stupid nonsense for a class about a novel that I didn't understand the whole life. That's the story of my whole life right there. So when he was starting out, he got a flack jacket from Channel 1. And when he opened it,

there was a notice that said it will not protect you from rifles, which by the way, that's exactly how people were dying in Sarajevo back in the war from snipers. So this guy goes out, rents a Yugo with paper thin walls, not exactly a vehicle fit for a war zone, but kind of your only choice. This is the kind of stuff you do before you have kids and a family. I also asked him off air what some of the riskier stunts or riskiest actions he's done in his younger years to get a story. Turns out it was more domestic. He tied a rope around his waist in a hurricane. I think it was Katrina so that the producer could pull him out of the muck if he fell in or got knocked over by the wind. It might have even been a different weather event. But imagine having to have your

producer yank you out of the muck or the water. I mean, it's just not going to happen. You're dead if you follow in that. A lot of what he covered early in his career was pretty grim. Katrina and things like that. It's really hard not to get a grim view of America when you're seeing the same things in New Orleans as you're seeing in Sri Lanka or other areas that don't have the same level of development as the United States. Nizier, you expect maybe help won't come or will take longer than it should, but not in a major U.S. city like New Orleans. So you wouldn't expect in the United States to see dead bodies tied to signs by their shoelaces to keep them from floating away, and yet that was the situation. So that, of course, would have an impact no matter what.

Also, I did ask about him growing up essentially a Vanderbilt slash Cooper. He found out his mother was famous, Gloria Vanderbilt, at age 12. So she at that time was one of the most famous people of her time. He just thought it was normal to have all these famous people over at the house all the time. But he also says he felt like his mother was a space alien, and it was his job to show her how to exist in the real world. Probably not super healthy for a kid, especially a fatherless kid to be responsible for his mother like that. On a lighter note, he thought dead people turned into statues when they died because his relatives all had sculptures and statues of themselves after they'd passed away. And he actually thought a statue of Teddy Roosevelt. He was on a school trip. He thought

a statue of Teddy Roosevelt was actually his grandfather, which was a point of embarrassment. But that sort of shows the level in which he grew up, although he did not, and I will note, have any sort of inheritance. I think he very recently came into a million and a half dollars, and, you know, he's already making probably 10 times that a year doing CNN. So, great conversation. Big thank you once again to Anderson Cooper. Links to all of his books and work will be in the show notes. Please use our website links. If you buy books from guests on the show, it does help support the show. Yes, audio works. Yes, it works in foreign countries. Worksheets for episodes are in the show notes. Transcripts are in the show notes. A video of this interview is going up on our YouTube

channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same software systems

and tiny habits that I use to create my own network, teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty. That six minute networking, my free course, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where you can find it.

Most of the guests on the show contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created in association with podcast My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with

friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's a fan of Anderson Cooper or just loves journalists, share this episode with him. Hopefully you find something great in every episode, so please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. was that like podcast? If you're looking for a new show to add to your rotation, something that'll make you stop mid-dishwashing and go, wait, what that actually happened? You got to subscribe to what was that like. It's real people telling the most surreal moments of their lives, and they're not just giving you the highlights. They're walking you through it from the inside as a person who actually lived it, which means you're basically getting a front row seat to the chaos. One episode is about Scott getting locked up in a foreign jail for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, Scott. Another is Sue's parachute failing. Wow, I'm surprised she was around to tell that story. And then there's Michael, who was stabbed on a bus, which makes your commute instantly feel a little bit more relaxing. Do you anything? So if you want to hear some wild and inspiring firsthand stories, I invite you to check out what

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