The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Perseverance, Family Wealth, and Building a Career On Air — with Anderson Cooper

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

Anderson Cooper joins Scott to discuss his experience covering the news throughout the past two decades, specifically as the anchor of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and a correspondent for 60 Minutes on CBS News. Anderson also shares his thoughts on fatherhood, overcoming personal tragedies, and what he learned while researching his latest book, “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.” Follow Anderson on Twitter, @andersoncooper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Episode 102, the atomic number from Nobelium, the Queen's Gambit cleaned up at the Emmys. I love that show because I can watch TV and yell, move the horse, move the horse, and I have no idea what that even means. Go, go, go. Welcome to the 102nd episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, oh my God, I'm brimming with excitement. I am literally, this is big. This is big. Today, we speak with the one and only Anderson Cooper. And in addition to being, you know, kind of the, actually, Anderson Cooper is the most trusted living journalist in the world.

I've read that in several places. We hear about his experience covering the news throughout the past two decades, specifically as the anchor for CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 and a correspondent for 60 Minutes on CBS News. Anderson also shares his thoughts on fatherhood, overcoming personal tragedy, and what he's learned while researching his latest book, Vanderbilt, The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. So this plays a key role for me because my co-host on my other podcast, Kara Swisher, is always bringing the heat to her sway. When I say heat, I mean

really good guests. And I landed Anderson Cooper and I did not share it. I am not a giving person. He is all ours today on The Prof G Show. I've also gotten to know Anderson a little bit. We're not friends. We're friendly. I don't want to overstate our friendship, but he's just an... You know when you meet sort of people you admire? And I have found most of the time, I'm a little bit disappointed because I create this image of them being kind of superhuman. And you find, no, they're just as kind of awkward and strange as all of us. Anderson meets that bar. You meet the guy, and I've been thinking, as I say in the interview, a lot about masculinity and what it means to be a man and to have discipline.

And also I've been thinking about a lot about stoicism and to be a warrior and save more than you earn and protect others. And don't feel as if you need to respond to every slight. I just think this guy demonstrates a lot of behavior that young people and specifically young men want to model. And so I just have a lot of respect, admiration for Anderson. So anyways, I'm thrilled to have him on the show. And I think this is one of, I don't know, one of the more meaningful interviews we've done.

He's a very thoughtful guy. Anyways, with that, we typically do a top of the show where I rant about some business issue, usually involving big tech. This week, we're not going to do that because we want to play the full interview with Anderson Cooper. Anyways, here we are. We're going to bust right into our interview with Anderson Cooper. Anderson, where does this podcast find you? I am in my office at CNN in New York City. So, got to be honest, as always, everyone's very excited to hear from you,

but I'm going to turn this back to me. You are my revenge guest. You literally... What does that mean? Don't worry. It's not as scary as it sounds. So Kara and I share a podcast, Kara Swisher, and then she has hers and I have mine. And she'll get like the deputy commissioner of PBS cultural affairs for pivot. And then she gets Tim cook for sway. And I actually bring, I think pretty interesting guests on pivot. And I'm like,

that's it. That's it. I finally got you to come on. I'm like, I'm taking him to prop G. So you're my Tim cook. She has Tim cook. I have Anderson Cooper.

That's good. I know Tim. He's lucky to be in his company. Yeah, 100%. So we're going to get to your book, but first off, I want to- That old trick. That thing. That thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're going to talk about your book. Come on. Sorry, boss. Sorry. I've used that line a million times. I'm going to get to your book in a second, but- You get it. You get it. Yeah, we're really excited about your book.

Anyway, so I've been reading your bio, and I didn't realize you joined CNN in 2003. Is that right? I did. Yeah, actually 2002. Oh, my gosh. Actually, CNN called me the day after 9-11 and asked if I could go to Afghanistan. And I think it was the day after or two days after. And it took me, I couldn't immediately go, but yeah, I joined us then.

I mean, you're really a ground zero for media and what's happened with streaming and polarization. I'm just curious to get your take, looking at it through the, you know, kind of behind the music, if you will. If you did a behind the music broadcast news, as told by Anderson Cooper, what are the seminal changes since when you joined the news 20 years ago as an anchor? I mean, the speed of, obviously, I mean, I don't think, you know, the speed of stuff,

the speed of information, the speed of reaction times, the trajectory of stories is just exponentially greater. You know, a lot of people look back and they think of this sort of golden age of news back when it was Walter Cronkite and, you know, it was a newscaster people trusted and all America trusted. And, you know, he was an incredibly respected person and for good reason. But, you know, news back then was, I think the original CBS broadcast was like 18 minutes long or thereabouts, became a half hour program. But, you know, what was actually covered was very limited. So I just think the ability to be places is just extraordinary now. The logistics of it, it's remarkable what we see.

I'm not sure it's a good thing. I think it contributes to this feeling that I think a lot of people have of the world is an incredibly dangerous place and more dangerous than it's ever been, even though in fact, COVID aside, it's actually not. All by all metrics,

things are less likely to die a violent death than ever before, but we see all this stuff in ways that we haven't before. The whole business model also is obviously, you know, has evolved. You know, I don't know what the future holds on streaming. Obviously, that seems to be where every company believes the future is. People have been talking about the death of the evening broadcast news for as long as I can remember. And it's still around. But I don't think it's part of the conversation as much as I can remember. And it's still around.

But I don't think it's part of the conversation as much as cable news is. And what do you think the media gets wrong when you see a story or you see a way that you're approaching a story or the network's approaching a story and you think, you know, this isn't accurate or this is bad for society?

Are there any things that bother you, not necessarily about CNN, but about media in general? Well, I mean, that term media is so broad that I always hesitate to make sweeping comments because media incorporates everybody from some far-right talk radio person to cable. I think, look, things that are stories get more attention than things that are not. You know, the story right now of the young woman who was blogging and podcast, you know, making videos and who's now disappeared and her fiance is suspected and has disappeared. You know, that's a story which is getting a lot of attention.

And there's other obviously missing people who do not get that same lot of attention. And there's other, obviously, missing people who do not get that same amount of attention. And I think one of the reasons beyond... They're not on Instagram. Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, there is a racial component, sadly, which has been much discussed over many years in a lot of these cases.

But there's also a component of when there's video of this person's journey and when it's a story, those are all things which affect coverage for better or for worse and that make people feel connected to stuff. You probably have interviewed the most influential, powerful people in the world of any living general journalists what surprises you or what has surprised you the most uh if you can make a general statement or just curious if there's individuals that just shocked you because i always thought the most interesting some of the most interesting parts of interviews when i go on tv is what happens before and after when you're off mic and i think sometimes people don't understand or don't have a real understanding of the individual other than their media presence. Has anything struck you about powerful people off mic or that we don't understand about them?

Are there any specific examples where you think, you know, people really don't get this person? Powerful people. They're just like us. Yeah. One leg at a time, right? You know, okay, from my perspective, people are either far more impressive than they are in them, than the public perception of them are far less impressive. I am struck repeatedly by just how generally more interesting people are as just as human beings beyond what you think they're going to be, but also just how kind

of human people are. I still hold on to this thing where I think in this culture, we imagine like the rich or the super wealthy or the super, you know, successful or powerful that they're somehow have some secret that, I mean, I still hold on to this idea that, well, they must have some sort of secret that I don't know. And the same way that I grew up believing, you know, adults had some sort of knowledge or secret that I didn't know. And then gradually as you grow up, you realize they're just flailing around like everybody else. And I find that interesting. And to me, it sort of humanizes them. The thing about, you mentioned people, you know, talking to people before and after the interview. I don't really do that.

I'm not interested in being friends with a lot of the people I interview. It's not my job. I don't want to be socializing with them. I don't go to parties with them for the most, you know, I mean, I've been to a few, I guess, over the years. But I don't go to the White House Christmas party or whatever people get invited to. That wasn't you at the Met Gala with a dress that said, tax the rich. That wasn't you? I went once to the Met Gala and realized it was not my cup of tea. No, you're not. But like the White House correspondent dinner, I don't want to be

socializing with all these people because I just don't think it helps my coverage of them. My job is not to be friends with them. It's to ask them questions. It's so true. I write a lot about famous tech people, and the first thing, or one of the first things, I'm not exaggerating, like 50% of the CEOs where I've written about their company negatively,

they reach out and say, Hey, Scott, I'd love to have coffee with you. And it's not because they're interested in me. It's because they're very smart. And to get to that point, they're usually very charming, likable people. And I find that when I meet them, I like them and I'm less inclined to write in an unfiltered fashion about them. Absolutely. Yeah. I find it harder to have a tough interview with somebody if I know that they have a very sweet child or whatever it is. I'm not easily malleable, but I am impacted by walking in somebody else's shoes. I really do believe in that. I don't have such strong...

I'm not somebody who wears their opinion on their sleeve and is yelling at the top of their lungs in anger every night on cable news. I don't like to watch that as a viewer. I don't want to be that person. And I don't necessarily think that someone who disagrees with something that I might privately believe is a bad person. I'm willing to believe maybe I'm wrong, and I'm interested in hearing why they think somebody's wrong. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy?

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that get your marketing running seamlessly. All backed by Constant Contact's expert live customer support. Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. What learnings have shifted their career trajectories? And how do they, Vanderbilt, the Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. You're not a rich kid. You're a rich, great, great, great, great grandson. You have this crazy legacy that I sort of knew but didn't understand. But to the extent you're comfortable, you had what I would describe as a fairly atypical upbringing.

Oh, really? You think so? I thought my upbringing was very relatable. A skosh, just a skosh. And also- You mean your mom didn't have trolley chaplains to have fertility drugs to her body so she could smuggle them into the United States and give birth to me? That's called a Tuesday for me. That's me coming back from Ibiza, boss. But you've had a lot of privilege. You had a decent amount of tragedy. I think when people see you, they see this sort of, I don't know, almost porcelain doll of you. You kind of seem fairly like stab him with a fork and see if he bleeds because you just seem so together and you just seem very well balanced. And yet I look at your upbringing and the privilege and some of

the tragedy. I'm like, it's kind of a semi-miracle. This guy isn't pretty fucked up. Can you talk a little bit about the influences on you growing up? I know you're very close to your mom and what it meant to grow up with that privilege and some of that tragedy. But when you look back and say, these were sort of the defining forces in my life, the really big influences, have you thought about that? Is there anything you're willing to share? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, sure. I mean, I grew up with the first 10 years of my life were very different than the latter afterward. I divide my life in between the first 10 years of my life and then the rest of my life. And when I was 10, the calendar was kind of reset. It was like when the Pol Pot took over Cambodia and reset it to year zero. And at 10, my dad died. And that was, for me, a huge

chasm opening up and a complete change in how I viewed the world and how I viewed myself in the world. And it was, for me, kind of a wake-up call that, you know, I don't think necessarily for better, changed the trajectory of my life and changed the person who I was. I think the person I was before then was much more interesting and open and outgoing, and I became much more reserved and catastrophist and wanting to prepare for what I believe would be the next catastrophe. And so for- Just a question. Do you remember much about your father or your relationship with him? I remember him being a great father and I remember the warmth of him and the talk.

I remember putting my head on his stomach when I would watch TV at night. And I remember the beat of his heart. And I remember the sound of typewriter keys writing as he was writing books and articles because he was a writer. A lot of the actual memories, I don't really remember. He did write a book about his family growing up and about my brother and I and my mom and the family that he created with her. And that he wrote it as a letter to my brother and I because he knew he probably wouldn't live

to see us grow up. And so a lot of my memories come from that book. And I can't even separate what I actually remember, remember, and what I just know from reading that book of things that happened. But that was enough, like 10 years with him was enough to give me a foundation that is what has carried me forward through the rest of my life. And afterward, I became, you know, I suddenly didn't really know my mom when my dad died. She had been working all the time and was often traveling. And, uh, I suddenly was with her and, you know,

began to figure out who she was and realized very early on that she didn't have a plan. Um, which she later, you know, I never asked her, but it was very clear to me. And she talked about it later in her life with me a lot. Uh, and she, I realized there was nobody like with their hand on the rudder. And, um, I decided I needed to be nobody like with their hand on the rudder. And I decided I needed to be that person with my hand on the rudder. So at a fairly young age, you decided you were sort of, for lack of a better term, the man of the house. I was her protector. Like I needed to vet, you know, the people around her. I tried to give her advice on dating, you know, from everything from guys to financial stuff,

even though I know nothing about financial stuff. But I would read stuff like, not spending money is making money. And so I would try to like, I had conversations with her about that. And of course, which we both knew at the time, I was 13 or so, she wasn't going to stop spending money

because it was just part of her makeup. Something to do with her last name. And you have more tragedy in your life. You lost your father and then you lost your brother. Yeah, I didn't. I mean, I know where they were, so I didn't actually lose them. Sorry. I like that you inject humor into that.

Yes, I do. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah, no, my brother died by suicide when he was 23. He jumped off the balcony or sort of leapt off the balcony of our apartment building in front of my mom. And so I was 21. And that too, obviously, was shattering for her, particularly witnessing for me. And again, it certainly brought my mom and I a lot closer together. I'd always been very understanding of my mom and protective of her and certainly became more so after that. But, you know, I set about a course very early on of saving money and working from the time I was, I don't know, 12 or 13. Because I figured one day I'm going to need to, you know, support people in my family and build a stable life, and I need to start as soon as possible. Was there ever a moment where you think, okay, my dad died at 10, which is a tragedy, but dads and moms die.

Right. Your brother dies, which is not only a tragedy, but it's just, I mean, that's just sort of, there's no way to get around it. It's a profound tragedy that's unexpected. Did you at any point think, okay, from the outside, people see our last names and imagine a world, but we're, you know, we're somewhat cursed? Did you have a fear of insecurity and fear, or was it motivating? There was a ton of fear about, certainly after my dad died,

a fear about, you know, my mom drank, which she was open about as well. And, you know, if you grow up with somebody who's drinking, you know, it's up and down. You don't know what, when you open the door, coming home from school, what the situation's going to be. And so, yeah, there was a lot that was unstable.

And let me just preface this by saying I had a tremendous privileges. I was growing up in a very nice house. My mom was, you know, making lots of money and I don't want, you know, I'm not like selling a sob story. All of this for me was incredibly motivating. It was incredibly motivating. I think some people are, are, are sucked under by tragedies. Some people are unable to use it as propellant. But I absolutely used it as a fuel initially, I mean, unconsciously, but it definitely fueled me forward just as it did my mom.

My mom, I think the best thing I ever got from my mom was this sort of this ability to push through and really through work and rely on work to get through anything. And I think both my mom and I had that. They've done a lot of studies on success. And one of the keys to success is resilience. And have you thought about what were the attributes that you and your mom had or the influences or upbringings or values that turn tragedy into a catalyst as opposed to a lot of us just get stuck yeah i think i mean i think rage has a lot to do with it and like anger about what doesn't seem fair to you know it's like

the there's a poem my mom and i forgot who wrote it but there's a line in about the hard-hearted heart of a child and i i remember that feeling of, you know, being a little kid with a very hard little heart and full of rage at, you know, losing my dad and having, you know, a situation that I would have preferred to be a little bit more stable. And, you know, I think my brother and I both grew up in the same home, the same circumstances.

He ended up taking his life, dying by suicide in a very shocking way in front of my mom. And, you know, it's always interested me how two people growing up in the same home, the same forces at play, one doesn't make it through and one propels themselves through. And I think he and I had different strategies. And my strategy was, I set about a course of study on, it's going to sound ridiculously overly dramatic, but on survival. I started taking survival classes, courses in the wilderness when I was a teenager. I left high school early. I rode in a truck across sub-Saharan Africa for six months. Weren't you planning on being a Marine at some point? I was interested in the military. I was interested in, I interned at the CIA. I was interested in a lot of jobs where you couldn't be gay. So none of them would have been careers. I mean, CIA at the time, you couldn't be gay. And, you know, CIA at the time, you couldn't be gay. And in joining the military, you couldn't be gay.

So I realized after a while, it's not fruitful or wise to go into a career where you have to lie about who you are. And being gay, was that a moment or – I just don't know how to articulately put this. Has that been a source of fire? Has it been one of those things that in terms of obstruction or challenges that has been a fire or a catalyst? And I would imagine you've seen huge changes in the opportunities in your industry over the last 20 years, but, um, your own sexuality, what role has that played or has it in your, in your career, your motivation, your resilience? Yeah. I mean, it was early on when I was a little kid, you know, I probably knew I was gay when I was six or seven. And, uh, you know, when I was a teenager, I wasn't really happy about it because

it was inconvenient and difficult. And I certainly, I was growing up in the early eighties in New York city and my mom had tons of gay friends and there were people dying of AIDS and, um, the future looked pretty bleak and I really wanted, dreamed of having children one day and I, it didn't seem possible or having a family, getting married and all that sort of thing. Um, but at the same time, I, I've wasted a lot of years, like my teenage years, like wishing I wasn't gay. And, uh, and yet I read a lot about, I started reading as a teenager, a lot of, you know, gay history. And, and I got annoyed. I got annoyed that I was wasting time worrying about this and, uh, being upset at myself about it. And at a certain point, really probably was really probably the year I graduated college. I'd had a boyfriend all

through college. And I was just like, this is a waste of time. I'm not doing this anymore. And I really embraced it. And that was one of the best decisions I ever made. So the book, Vanderbilt, The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, you wrote with a historian. Yeah, Catherine Howe. Catherine Howe. And I found that the most interesting part of the book, quite frankly. It just gave me a sense of what the world was like. And your great, great, great grandfather was kind of the Jeff Bezos of his age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, success story, you know, very modest beginning and became the wealthiest person in the world. What did you, were you going to comment on that or? No, yeah.

Wealthiest person in the world. I went into this thinking he was a sociopath and because i'm really interested in sociopaths i think there are a lot more sociopaths i mean studies have shown there's a lot more sociopaths than we really you know it's a key component of being a ceo just fyi i think that's true i mean i think there's you only imagine serial killers but there's a whole world of like well-known people they just modulate it better yes exactly yeah so that. So that was sort of my initial thought of going into it. I've stepped back from that because I, you know, one can't, you can't psychoanalyze somebody who's no longer around. But he himself described a

mania for money from a very young age. Dropped out of school at 11, started working on his dad's boat, got his own boat at 16, tiny little small boat to ferry supplies from Staten Island to New York, and built a steamship empire and then moved into railroads late in life, building a railroad empire, founding Grand Central Station, yada, yada, yada. And yeah, died with $100 million,

which was more money than was in the U.S. Treasury at the time. And then his son, who he had made fun of his entire life, and his son finally tricked him in a business deal and outsmarted him. And that was the turning point where Cornelius Vanderbilt looked at his son and said, oh, you know what? Maybe he has something. He's the guy who's going to inherit all the money. And his son doubled the fortune or more than doubled it. Which is unusual. It's usually the son that loses it and the grandkids who make it back, right? Yeah, well, in this case, it was the grandkids who then just started spending it

because they wanted to push into New York society and they were far away from the making of the money and they just became entitled. And so, yeah, I was interested in like how this figure comes out of nowhere to create this empire. And what did you, working with Catherine, what did you find most interesting about that period

that was different about creating a dynasty versus what it would be like today, the folks creating, amassing huge wealth? You know, to me, I was fascinated by New York, even in the first Vanderbilt came in the mid-1600s. He was an indentured servant. He was a poor farmer from Holland. And the Commodores born, or Cornelius Vanderbilt came in the mid-1600s. He was an indentured servant. He was a poor farmer from Holland. And the Commodore was born, or Cornelius Vanderbilt,

who becomes known as the Commodore, was born at the end of the 1700s, dies in 1877. That whole period is just fascinating. I mean, New York in the 1600s, some of the first people who were brought to New York in the 1600s by the Dutch West India Company were 11 enslaved Africans who helped them build the settlement. And there's a, just the history of enslavement of people in old New York, in Dutch New York, is really fascinating, awful.

And the history of that time were of the lack of regulations, the lack of taxes, the lack of, in the Commodore's life, there were not the same kind of regulations. And he was able to be cunning and ruthless. And really, he didn't want to just win over people who were challenging him in business, or he felt had cheated them. He wanted to destroy them. And he would set about doing that. And there's a quote from him saying, I'm not going to sue you

because the legal system takes too long. I'm just going to destroy you. And that's what he had the capabilities of doing with the kind of money he had. He was not a nice guy. He was awful to his family. And that pathology, that mania for money, I think, and Catherine and I are right, that it infected all the next generations of Vanderbilts.

That pathology played out in their lives in a whole bunch of different fascinating ways. It sounds like there's, and I don't know how you're going to respond to this, it sounds like there's an analogy to the Trumps, that the father's sort of weirdness, aggression, toxicity, quite frankly, that DNA kind of carried on. How did that manifest itself in future generations? he had mostly girls. He didn't care about them because they would not inherit the Vanderbilt name because they would be married off. They wouldn't be allowed to be buried in the Vanderbilt mausoleum because only people, only men could be buried in the mausoleum and only a man that had the last name Vanderbilt. So he didn't really care about the women and his sons, he was brutal to until the one kind of showed a spark of business savvy in probably in his 40s. And then that's when he started to elevate him. His other son died by suicide, shot himself in the head. He was secretly gay. He had epilepsy. The commoner thought that was a sign of weakness, had him committed twice to what was that called? Lunatic Lunatic asylums. You know, he was really tough.

And his son, Billy, who inherited all the money, you know, ends up in a huge legal battle with his brothers and sisters because they believe that he tricked the Commodore into giving him all the money. When in fact, I mean, the Commodore wanted to keep all the money together because he knew that if he broke it up, what would ultimately happen would happen, which was it gets diffused and then ultimately disappears.

And then the subsequent generation grew up in this incredible world of entitlement where, you know, the riches of the Vanderbilt. I mean, Bezos is probably a good parallel just in terms of the size of the fortune and how insane it was at the time. You know, Bezos' fortune is unimaginable. The Commodores as well. You know, one in every $20 in circulation in the United States, if you had taken it out of circulation,

that it belonged to Commodore Vanderbilt. Coming up after the break. What interested me was being a place where the language of loss was spoken and where life and death was very much was there. And it wasn't fake conversations. It wasn't, you know, talking niceties. Every conversation was was raw and real. And it was one of the first times I felt anything in probably since the time my dad died.

Stay with us. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you?

And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the Senior AI Reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Esther Perel, psychotherapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin, which delves into the multiple layers of relationships, mostly romantic. But in this special series, I focus on our relationships with our colleagues, business partners, and managers. Listen in as I talk to coworkers facing their own challenges with one another

and get the real work done. Tune into Housework, a special series from Where Should We Begin, sponsored by Klaviyo. It seems like every wealthy family really is sort of a mix between succession and knives out. You know, I don't know each other well, but we know each other. And it struck me that we both have somewhat of a similar story where we sort of took or felt responsibility for the financial well-being of our mothers. And I came at it from a different lens, but the emotions were exactly the same.

And I always say with rich people, generally, you find that rich people are living hand-to-mouth. They're just living hand-to to mouth on a higher level. And there's the same level of that dysfunction and stress. And the functional families are the ones you don't know. When you do this research and you really look through your past, and you were talking about the difference between your brother and you and different paths, the thing I found, and you'll see this, I think, with kids, is it's an argument for nature versus nurture. Because the only thing that you know when you have two kids is they're going to be totally different.

When you look at the genetics or the things that have been passed on through your family and you spend time documenting it, was there any decisions or realizations about the DNA you've inherited and any actions you want to take or any, has it, has it changed the way you approach life and things you want to modify or modulate for, or things you've discovered in yourself and you think, I want to, I want to expand on that, or I want to, I want to modulate it? It certainly confirmed the decision that I consciously made as a little kid. I mean, I probably didn't make it consciously in the sense of like, I knew the problem with the Vanderbilts. I just sensed that whatever my mom and my dad, and I looked to my dad, and I made that decision

early on. Doing all this research certainly confirmed for me a lot of the choices I made, because it looked to me that the choices that subsequent each generation of Vanderbolts and each individual in that family made, it was impacted by the money. And for me, I, from a young age convinced, I told myself, whatever money your mom has is not going to last. It's not going to be there. And you should just discount it. Do not get used to your mom has, I looked at it as my mom has a very nice house that I'm living in. This is nothing, this is not mine and it's not never going to be mine. And I need to build my own house one day and I need to figure out how to do that. Um, and so that was my mentality. And I think that was a healthy mentality. I don't think it was a happy mentality, but I think it was a long-term,

it played out well for me in the sense of believing I needed to work hard. And, you know, I mean, I started child modeling when I was like 12 or 13, which is a ridiculous thing, but you know, there's not a lot of things when you're that age you can do. And I would go every day on these go-sees after school. And, you know, there were other kids there with their parents and I was just by myself. And, um, you know, I was a weird little kid. Uh, The other, you know, other thing that it's been confirmed, you know, confirmed my dad, my grandfather on my mom's side died of alcoholism at 45. I mean, he was guzzling absinthe and on his deathbed, you know, his esophagus exploded

and projectile vomited blood onto all the walls. I mean, it was not a happy ending. It certainly has confirmed my early on decision not to drink. I mean, I'll have occasionally a glass of wine, but I don't think I come from a line of people who should drink. I've always admired people who come from some degree of wealth who use that as a motivation because to be blunt, I didn't come from wealth and that was what was motivating for me. I think if I'd been raised in similar circumstances to you, the only two things I know I would have had in my life as a young man is a Range Rover and a cocaine habit. I think people who come from some level of wealth and manage to be motivated.

I mean, you basically, and I am blowing smoke here, you decided to pick up a handheld camera and head to war zones as a means of establishing credibility. That was sort of your first job, wasn't it? Yeah, it wasn't actually... Yeah, that's how I started reporting. It wasn't as a means of establishing credibility, though. It was... I wanted to... I mean, I talked about...

Again, I don't want to sound like... Again, I had an incredibly privileged upbringing. I don't want to sound like I'm crying here about what was me. But in my child view, survival was a real issue. I mean, my dad didn't survive. My brother didn't. And that was a real fear of mine.

And I started doing survival courses. And out of college, I just decided it would be best for me to go to war, to go to war zones and understand how people survive and see what would happen if New York... I always wondered, I need to prepare myself for if New York is attacked and there's a war here, how will I make a living? What will I do? These are the kind of things I thought about when I was a kid. Child model. Yes, exactly. Right, I knew child modeling would not work in a war zone.

So I started going to- Your second career. That's your fallback, child model. So yeah, so I wanted to go places where this was happening and understand how people survive and learn other people's stories about how they survive. And becoming a reporter was the only way to kind of do that other than joining the military,

which I couldn't because I was gay. That's what I did. My friend made a fake press pass for me. I borrowed a camera and I started snuck into Burma. I hooked up with some students fighting the government. I ended up in Somalia in the famine. Sarajevo, during the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia in the early 90s, Rwanda in the genocide, Haiti a lot. You know, I wanted to go places where I could understand about life and death

and the line between the two and why some people survive and other people don't. And what were sort of the key moments or figures in your career? So you're going to war zones, you're a reporter. When you look back and say, these are kind of the two or three moments that got me or, you know, kind of really were step changes in my career. What were those things? So I did, I snuck into Burma, hooked up some students, fighting the government, then lived in Vietnam for a while, going to school and shot some stories. And then I ended up in Somalia in 1992 in August, in this before like Black Hawk Down, before the US military, you know,

landed in Mogadishu. And I shot a story in a small town called Baidoa. And that story ended up airing on a thing called Channel One, which was a thing created by Chris Whittle. Chris Whittle. And was in about half the high schools and middle schools in the United States at the time. And that for me,

I didn't know at the time that that was a big turning point in terms of my career. I knew that it was a big turning point in my life to witness horror on that scale and starvation. It was the first time I'd seen a child die in front of me. It was the first time I'd seen a child die in front of me. It was the first time

I'd seen that level of death. And the horror of that was a huge impact on me in terms of wanting to be... When that happened, and I remember the moment I was in a small hut made out of twigs and a kid had died while I was there. And it was his mother and father washing his body before it would be buried in a mass graves. And this was their last child. He was five years old and they didn't have any more kids. And I was like, this is what I want to do. This is where I want to be forever.

I want to be where real things are happening. You know, it wasn't some frivolous story. It was, this was life and death. And I wanted to document that and tell, be there and just bear witness to it, even if it didn't change anything. It's strange because the thing that's the contradictory forces here are, you've described yourself as someone who thinks a lot about catastrophe in some ways when it comes to money, risk averse. But then I hear a young man who has a lot of options deciding to go to Somalia in the early 90s. And the term I would use for that is fucking crazy. It's almost like, are you an adrenaline junkie?

No, not at all. Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, first of all, you said I had a lot of options. In my mind, correctly or not, that is not how I viewed it. I viewed it as I have no options. And this is actually the only option I can think of to actually forge a life that would be interesting and valuable to me. I didn't know I could make a career out of it.

I didn't know I could get paid to do it. In my mind, there was no plan B. It had to be this. I don't know if that's a good or bad way to look at things, but that's how I looked at it. But adrenaline, yeah, there certainly is adrenaline, but for me, it's not so much adrenaline. I mean, I've had moments of intense adrenaline of like covering the elections of Mandela in South Africa. And in the run-up to it, there was a lot of violence between the Incada Freedom Party and the ANC. And I was in a shootout in downtown,

in a demonstration where there were snipers shooting into the crowd. And that was, in terms of adrenaline, one of the most adrenaline-filled experiences of my life. But that's not what interested me. What interested me was being a place where the language of loss was spoken and where life and death was very much there. And it wasn't fake conversations. It wasn't talking niceties.

Every conversation was raw and real. And it was one of the first times I felt anything in probably since the time my dad died. And I wanted to feel stuff. And you were talking, one of the lovely things you said about your dad, and I'll summarize, is that you don't remember a lot about your father, but you can feel him. You can feel his heartbeat. You can feel his heartbeat. You can feel his touch. How has that impacted your behavior or some of the goals you have

in terms of your own fatherhood and the relationship you want to have with your own son? Yeah, it's completely my guidepost to everything with my son. I mean, I am so in love with being a dad and so in love with this little human being. And as you said, I completely agree with you

on the whole nature versus nurture thing. I mean, he's all there. Like there's, his character is already 17 months old and just, you know, he has a sly smile and a sly sense of humor. And I know this

and it's extraordinary to me. And I'm so excited to see more of who this little person already is. And I just don't want to, like, I just want to help him along and not mess him up. And, um, I wanted to give him, you know, I, what my dad gave me was a sense of stability in a time I wouldn't ordinary, I wouldn't otherwise have had that. And I want to create a stable platform for my son and present him with options and show him a lot of different things and see what sticks and see what he's interested in.

And the other thing my dad did and my mom did too was they included my brother and I in on everything. We weren't shunted to a children's table at parties. I remember going to a Thanksgiving meal at a relative's house and they had a kid's table. And I remember looking at my mom and dad being like, are you kidding? We're expected to sit at the kid's table? No way. And when you think about, I mean, you spend the day kind of highlighting everything. I don't want to say highlighting everything that's wrong with the world, but look, if it bleeds, it leads. And I would imagine, I find being in the media sometimes, I just get,

I have to shock myself into not being cynical and not just kind of shaking my head all the time because, you know, things are reasonably good and getting incrementally better doesn't make much of a good headline. When you come back from a day of talking to people about vaccine hesitancy or climate change or autocracies and you see this little boy, are you hopeful? Do you feel really protective? Do you feel like I've got to kill it and leave money and protection for this kid

or this kid's opportunities, the world is going to get better. What's your outlook? Well, I do believe the world is only getting better. I mean, I don't believe that every single day. And there are days I, you know, the times we live in and this administration, you know, the extent to which people are following laws and conspiracy theories is terrifying and very sad. But I also look, you know, I love history and I look at the history of America and there have been conspiracy theories for a long time. And the whole QAnon conspiracy theory is really just a regurgitation

and reinvention of age-old anti-Semitic tropes that have been around for hundreds of years. And so it just got a new spin on it. As for the idea of leaving money, I was very glad my parents told me early on, you know what, there's not a pot of gold waiting for you. And even if we don't believe in inherited wealth and college will be paid for, and then you a pot of gold waiting for you. And even if we don't believe in inherited wealth and college will be paid for, and then you're going to be on your own. And that's the way we view it should be. And I am so happy about that.

I'm so glad, you know, William K. Vanderbilt, my great uncle who had inherited, you know, I don't know, tens of millions of dollars and did nothing with his life and forced his daughter to be married off to some British Duke for, but the only reason was to, a penniless British Duke to get a British title

for some ridiculous society reasons. You know, at the end of his life, he told the New York Times, you know, that inherited wealth is like cocaine. It's as bad as cocaine in terms of sucking your initiative. And I really believe that. I mean, you look, you talk about the Trumps.

I mean, you know, Donnie Jr. and Eric Trump, I don't know that they have much money, but because I don't think their father is of that mind frame, despite him inheriting lots of money from his dad. But I don't, you know, what have they really done? Other than, you know, I mean, they're in their dad's shadow. They followed him into whatever branding business he's been in. And, you know, the same really with Ivanka Trump.

In terms of your own professional career, I find that when she kind of, you're younger than me, but we're sort of the same generation. I always found kind of when you hit your late 40s, you do start to think about, quote unquote, the end. And that time is finite. Whereas when you're young, I think time is just start to think about, quote unquote, the end. And that time is finite. Whereas when you're young, time is just this amorphous thing that will go on forever. Professionally, what boxes are left for you to check? And I'm going to ask you not to say, well, I want to be doing the exact same thing,

if you can resist saying that. In 10 years or looking out, what boxes professionally do you want to check that are still not checked? Well, just very briefly, I always thought I'd be dead at 50 because my dad died at 50. So when I hit in my forties, I thought not only did I think about the end, I was like, the end is nigh, you know, and- Here it is. I'm done. I was fully, I mean, that's- Maybe I should try cocaine. I got six months left. I told you there was no plan B.

My plan was I'm going to go as hard as I can and drop dead at 50 because that's what happened to my dad. And I just want to live an interesting life till then. And then I hit 51. I was like, oh my God, now I can- What now? What now?

And I'm still a little bit in the what now, except in terms of career, the idea of just raising my son, even though he'll be 10 then and probably starting already to not really want to be around me. I don't have an answer of what I seem. I don't know what 10 years even looks like. I don't know what is it all.

You tell me. Is it all streaming services? Is it all who knows? Do you look at something? Oh, I'd like to do that I'd like to have I'd like to do be in a fictional scripted series on Netflix I'd like to

produce a movie I mean what would you think that would be a kick in the ass if I could have been the person who made Succession that series that I would love if I could have made Gamora which is my new favorite series that would be great. If I could

continue for 60 minutes, that would be telling stories and traveling around and doing things and covering breaking news for CNN. All that is... That's like life. It does not feel like work in that sense.

So I don't know. I don't have an answer for you. I'm sorry. So as we wrap up here, what advice would you give to young people just starting out in their career? What advice would you give to your younger self or to our younger listeners, professionally and personally? Um, well, I'm not going to say, uh, follow your bliss because I know you have written about what bullshit that is. And that's only what rich people say, which I actually agree with you on. My mom told me to follow my bliss, so you replied. Child modeling. Yes, exactly.

I believe in work. I believe in really working hard. And if you can be the first one in, and if you can be the last one to leave, if you don't have children at home, you should be that person. You should not be the person that is the last one to come back into the office after the office has reopened. You should be early on. I have a friend who's the CEO of a company. And he said to me that he was in the office the other day and he was riding the elevator with somebody who he'd never seen before, but who worked in the company. And he turned to the person and said, Oh, you know, what do you do here? And the person explained what they did. And he got out of the, the CEO

got out of the elevator and he called up the, the HR department and said, I just met like this rock star in the elevator who's great, who's really good and motivated. And I'm really pleased that this person is here at the company. And the fact that was that person and the CEO probably would not have had an interaction had it not been for the fact that this young person decided to come in and be there and do the job. And I think careers are often made in very serendipitous moments because you're there on the scene. I was only, you know, I was in Somalia when something was happening and that's how I was able to get a story.

And so I think you want to put yourself in a position where serendipitous moments can happen and where you can be noticed for the hard work that you are doing. So quick lightning round. So favorite band, favorite music? Elvis Costello. Oh my God. That's like my first. Well, like all the forces, yeah. But I'm also a huge Madonna fan, so. There we go. So you said Gamora, favorite piece of media. Best moment? Most inspiring moment? I mean, my son. Waking up every morning is the best moment.

Best interview you think you've done? When you finished the interview, you thought, that was something I want on my professional tombstone. I did an interview with Stephen Colbert where he talked a lot about grief. And to me, that was a really good, interesting interview. Who you would most want to be friends with that you interviewed that you're not friends with?

I don't know. I've never interviewed Molly Shannon, but I really want to be friends with Molly Shannon. I love Molly Shannon. I like that. Yeah, she's hilarious. Two or three people you've interviewed you think are going to change the world, like you think that for looking forward are going to have a huge impact.

There's a guy named Alexander McLean who has an organization called Justice Defenders. And I did a 60 Minutes profile of him. And I just think he's one of those people you meet. And I mean, I don't want to say holy, but he has a very strong religious faith. Justice Defenders, he came up with this idea to create a paralegal programs where prisoners teach other prisoners to become paralegals inside the prisons. Some who are really motivated, he helps them get correspondent law degrees to the University of London.

And he has graduated dozens of inmates who are currently imprisoned in prisons throughout Africa, and they are helping tens of thousands of other inmates get access to a fair hearing. They may be guilty, they may be innocent. This isn't just like helping innocent people, but everybody he believes deserves a fair hearing. And I think it's a model that's extraordinary, and I think he's extraordinary. I think something you really don't like about yourself, you're trying to change. I say um all the time. That annoys me. I say I mean.

That's your biggest weakness is um? I'm highly critical of everything. I'm working on my selfishness and narcissism. You're working on um? All right. I've embraced my selfishness and narcissism. You're leaning into it? I like me. I like me narcissism. You're leaning into it? I like me.

I like me full stop. All right, boss. Well, I don't know how you're going to take this, but what little I know of you, I've been thinking a lot about masculinity. And I'm trying to define it because I think that society has incorrectly conflated masculinity and toxicity. And loosely speaking, I think that masculinity is someone who demonstrates skill and strength to garner the resources and influence to protect and fight for others. You're one of the most masculine people I know. I'm being very serious. That's interesting. I mean, I don't know what my T-score is, but- There you go. Well, mine's going up, but we can talk about that on another show.

T-therapy, my boss, I would recommend it. Anderson Cooper is an award-winning journalist and the anchor of CNN's news broadcast show, Anderson Cooper 360. Anderson also serves as a correspondent for 60 Minutes on CBS News and his latest book, Vanderbilt, The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty is out now.

Also very strong like bull, strong like bull, Anderson Cooper. Anderson Cooper, thanks so much for joining us, boss. I really appreciate you doing this. I'm so glad it was just you and not that Kara Swisher. Hello. That's right. My revenge guest, Anderson Cooper. Stay safe, my brother. Thanks for doing this. Thank you. Algebra of happiness. One of the secrets to my modest success, simply put, is rejection. And rejection is a forward-looking indicator of your success. Simply put, if you're not getting rejected a lot, you're not going to be that successful.

Why is that? There's a myth that everything falls into place all the time for people who are successful. No, as a matter of fact, I think successful people endure more rejection than most people. I was given the opportunity to read for an original scripted series on Netflix as, wait for it, the asshole partner of a firm,

of a services firm that everyone's scared of and they thought this guy would be great. And I read, I bombed and they said no. And what does that mean? That means at some point, I am going to be on an original scripted program. Why? Because I am starting to get rejected

from a lot of stuff in media. I also tried to get one of my books turned into a movie and it got optioned and then fucking nothing happens as it never does for LA and me. But anyways, my point is at some point, it probably will be made into a movie or a scripted series because I'm getting rejected a lot. I ran for sophomore class president, junior class president, senior class president in high school, then student body president, then 10th grade senator. I ran for basically every office, and the only thing that happened every time was that I lost. I tried out for baseball. I tried out for football. I tried out for basketball.

I was cut from all of them. And guess what? Guess what? That is the key to my success. I've always been able to get rejected, to mourn, and then to move on. And the fact that I got some rejection from this Netflix drama, okay, I learned from it. I should have practiced more. I'll do better the next time. But if you are not being rejected a lot, it means you're not going to be successful. There's something here

around meeting people too. The reason I am partnering and raising children with someone who is quite frankly more impressive than me is that I was always willing to go up to strangers and begin speaking to them. And sometimes it's humiliating when they don't receive you warmly. But here's the difference between being someone who complains about the woman making 500 grand a year selling Oracle database software is she either played with the wrong toys or the right toys to endure rejection. The key to your success is rejection.

Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to The Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week on Monday and Thursday. My mom told me the story of my mom had dated Frank Sinatra for a bit,

and they remained friends for the rest of their lives. I love that. You just roll that out there. My mom had dated Frank Sinatra for a bit. You and I had the same upbringing. Again, it's a very relatable upbringing. I love that. What software do you use at work?

The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future?

In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. Did you know that almost 90% of executives see potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or extremely high positive impact on revenue growth. In Alex Partners' 2024 Digital Disruption Report, you can learn the best path to turning that disruption into growth for your business. With a focus on clarity, direction, and effective implementation, Alex Partners provides essential support when decisive leadership is crucial. You can discover insights like these

by reading Alex Partners' latest technology industry insights, available at www.alexpartners.com slash vox. That's www.alexpartners.com slash vox. In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters.