New Anderson Cooper Podcast ‘All There Is’ Becomes A Transformational Journey Through Grief

Recently, CNN Audio premiered their new show, All There Is with Anderson Cooper, a profoundly moving meditative podcast about the long-term effects of dealing with the loss of those very close to you.

The setup for the show is that three years after the death of his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson, the longtime CNN anchor, finally made the difficult decision to sell her apartment and had begun to go through her things. The legendary socialite, artist, designer and progeny of the Vanderbilt fortune was 95 years old when she died and had been in the apartment since his deceased father, Wyatt Cooper, purchased it in 1975. In the process of sifting through what remained of her life, Anderson decided to make this podcast, his first.

The first episode, entitled “Facing What’s Left Behind” is filled with particular sounds, like a deadbolt opening and door creaks, that place the listener directly in the shoes of the famous newsman and those sounds, alongside light jazz music while Anderson discusses memories of his mother and his family accumulated over a lifetime, give the episode a Mr. Rogers type feel.

It was a transportive feeling to listen to another man discuss his grief in frank terms, made even more so when Anderson talks further about the earlier family tragedies he faced – his father, writer Wyatt Cooper, died in 1978 at age 50 of open heart surgery, and ten years later his older brother Carter died from jumping out the window of the apartment as his mother pleaded with him to stop. He told People Magazine last year that “there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it.

The weight of those twin tragedies can break a young man’s heart and send him to despair, but young Anderson carried on bravely because of his devotion to his mother, describing himself in the podcast as feeling like “a lighthouse keeper to his family.”

And so the crux of the show is what one should do with all these memories and things left behind. “They’re alive in these things,” Anderson says in the podcast. “What do I do with these things? This can’t be all there is.”

These themes are universal, as we all will, if we haven’t already, be left behind with the things of someone we love dearly and be forced to decide on what to keep and what to discard. It’s a difficult and painful process, one that Anderson tries to rationalize when he says that “Marie Kondo says to not keep anything that doesn’t bring you joy, and my mom would have said let’s go forward.”

And go forward he does, as Anderson fully and eloquently expresses his feelings of his mother’s legacy to him. “I don’t know how she remained so open and vulnerable after her losses. I created a wall so I wouldn’t get hurt again, but it means you don’t feel anything else again ever, and I don’t want my children to see shadows of grief hiding my eyes like I saw in my moms. I want them to see my love reflected back and for them to feel that stability, and that they are safe and they are loved.”

Heavy long-lasting grief is not often discussed in major media, and All There Is feels like a dam bursting with emotions that can overwhelm you if those feelings aren’t spoken out loud and processed.

The second episode “Grateful for Grief” is a full conversation with tv host Stephen Colbert who suffered major life tragedies of his own as his father and two brothers died in a plane crash when he was just ten years old. Stephen, a devout Catholic, proves to be equally adept a life philosopher as he is a talk show host and is able to process the impact their deaths had and continue to have on his life over 40 years later. In one particularly heartbreaking moment, Stephen recounts how his young son recently needed a belt and without thinking Stephen handed him the belt of his dead brother Peter that he without thinking kept for all those years.

All There Is with Anderson Cooper premieres new episodes weekly and is a conduit for those emotions we didn’t know we were still dealing with. Listen to it, and see if you don’t find yourself thinking of your own losses and discovering new ways to grieve in healthy ways so you aren’t overcome by it.

5 stars out of 5.