Anderson Cooper is opening his heart — and it’s breaking listeners’ hearts right along with him.
During a deeply emotional episode of his podcast All There Is Live, the CNN anchor was brought to tears while speaking with writer Megan Falley, whose partner, poet Andrea Gibson, passed away earlier this year after a long battle with ovarian cancer.
Falley spoke about her struggle to use the word “died,” saying she prefers to say Gibson “allegedly died.”
“It felt so weird to talk with such certainty,” Falley explained. “We actually don’t know what that means. I felt so many signs and communications that it just didn’t feel right to say ‘Andrea died.’ So I love saying Andrea allegedly died.”
The line hit Cooper straight in the heart.
Visibly emotional, he took off his glasses and wiped tears from his eyes. “I’m crying because what you said is so unique and true,” he said softly. “We have no idea what this means.”
Cooper, 58, knows grief all too well. His father, Wyatt, died during open-heart surgery when Anderson was only 10. His brother, Carter, tragically died by suicide at 23, jumping from the balcony of their mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s Manhattan apartment. And in 2019, Cooper lost his beloved mother, who died at 95 after a battle with stomach cancer.
All of Cooper’s immediate family is gone — something he’s spoken about with raw honesty over the years. “My brother is buried next to my dad,” he once wrote. “I like to think of them together.”
In a 2018 Instagram post marking the 30th anniversary of Carter’s death, he shared, “I miss him and think about him every day. The shock of his death is as painful today as it was thirty years ago.”
Cooper launched All There Is Live this fall to create a space for people to talk openly about loss — something he’s spent decades navigating.
At the start of the episode, he played Peggy Lee’s haunting “Is That All There Is?” — a song he used to listen to with his mother in her final weeks. It’s a moment that captures the heart of the podcast: the mix of sadness, confusion, and beauty that comes with being human.
Through his tears, Cooper is doing what he’s always done best — helping others feel seen in their own grief.
Source: Radaronline
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