- - Anderson Cooper's father left him gifts from the grave | Exclusive

David Oliver, USA TODAYOctober 28, 2025 at 8:01 PM

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Anderson Cooper's father – who died nearly 50 years ago – is always with him. In this moment, actually, he's to his right.

The 58-year-old Cooper hung up two black-and-white portraits of his father two days ago in his cozy Manhattan office, that looks less like an office and more like a peaceful nook. The photos sat in frames for decades – much like all the grief Cooper had over losing dad Wyatt Cooper, when he was 10, and his brother Carter when he was 21. Cooper's mother Gloria Vanderbilt also died six years ago.

But Cooper isn't holding back anymore. His grief podcast "All There Is," which premiered three years ago, is turning into a weekly year-round endeavor with a new accompanying live show airing Thursday nights at 9:15 ET on CNN. Expect Cooper to talk with not just celebrities – upcoming guests include Luke Bryan, Mariska Hargitay and Charlamagne tha God – but podcast listeners and viewers, too, who regularly call in to a voicemail box and share their grief stories with him. Thousands upon thousands.

It helps Cooper just as much as it helps them. "I struggle with that loneliness a lot," he says, his bright green shirt and blue eyes popping over a video call. "But doing the podcast and the interactions I have with people now are beautiful and really do help." Expect the live show to feel comfortable and casual; he won't be in a stuffy studio, but with his father's photographs by his side in his homey CNN office.

"I think of it as like an old-school late night radio calling show about grief and loss," he says. "And I just like the intimacy of that."

"I think of it as like an old-school late night radio calling show about grief and loss," Anderson Cooper says. "And I just like the intimacy of that."

'We all get stuck': Anderson Cooper more vulnerable than ever in new grief podcast

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Before the podcast, Cooper didn't grieve. He "never allowed himself to." "I've woken up to the realization, I think, as many people do at a certain point in their life, that there is all this unrecognized grief that I have not paid attention to," he says, "that I have not allowed myself to pay attention to, and it's completely altered my life."

He hid his emotions to protect himself from pain, and buried himself in work. He never celebrated birthdays nor any of the successes in his life. "I realized I've muted much of my life because I was so desperate to avoid this sadness that I avoided all emotion. I avoided joy."

That's changed now for him as a parent of two boys: Wyatt, 5, and Sebastian, 3. "I do have these two little boys who I have so many reasons to be joyous, and they are just bursting with joy," he says. "And I love that, and I want to fully feel it and embrace it, and have them see joy in my eyes when they look at me, and not some sort of sadness behind my eyes, which I saw a lot of times with my mom throughout her life." This hasn't changed overnight, but he's working through it.

He credits podcast guest Francis Weller, author of "The Wild Edge of Sorrow," with helping him "figure out a way to slowly titrate toward the sadness, to make space for it and develop a, what he calls a companionship with grief, or an apprenticeship with sorrow."

Grief isn't just one thing, of course. "Listening to these messages, you hear every permutation of grief there is," Cooper says. It's loss of marriage, dreams unrealized, anticipatory grief. "There's an ocean of grief, and much of it is unacknowledged by the people who are feeling it, and they know it's there, but like me, they have tried to push it down."

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1 / 48Passages 2025: Those we’ve lost through the yearItalian Fashion designer Giorgio Armani poses before the inauguration of his shop in the Diagonal avenue of Barcelona, on September 16, 2003. Giorgio Armani, the famed Italian fashion designer who achieved elegance and timelessness through simplicity, has died. He was 91. Armani "worked until his final days," the Armani Group said in a statement Thursday, Sept. 4, announcing his death.Anderson Cooper found lost footage of his father

Cooper has mined much of his past as he's processed his grief; the podcast began as he went through his mother's possessions after her death. His dad wrote a book called "Families" in 1976, a memoir about the importance of families. He considers it effectively a letter from father to son he can consult and read. About a month ago, though, something incredible happened.

An archivist at Mississippi Public Television reached out. A colleague had been digitizing old film recordings and found footage of his father talking about his book. It floored him: how he's sitting, how he talks, how he gestures, the look in his eyes. He remembered it all, but didn't know he remembered.

"I'd never seen my dad moving since I last saw him as a 10-year-old boy before he entered the hospital," Cooper says. "And this was the only video recording I have of my dad, the only moving pictures I have of my dad."

Anderson Cooper's "All There Is" grief podcast is expanding.

Now, Cooper is prioritizing conversations about loss with his own kids. Well, sort of.

He and his elder son, Wyatt, talk about death all the time. "It's something that he has been bringing up, he's trying to make sense of," he says. His younger son Sebastian, at this point, is "very concerned about Ninja Turtles" and not quite there yet.

But for Wyatt, "I want him to feel that it's a conversation we should be having, and to feel OK about it."

Because as Cooper knows, "you can run from it as long as you want, but it's not going away. It's there waiting for you."

Sometimes, in photographs to your right.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Anderson Cooper discusses grief podcast, parenting, father Wyatt, loss

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