Is Anderson Cooper the new face of grief?

He's giving us a master class in how to talk to the public

In a New York Times Magazine interview published Aug 31, Anderson Cooper — the CNN newsanchor and journalist — describes how he got into grief. His podcast “All There Is With Anderson Cooper” is actually the best primer on grief I know. It’s real, it’s gritty, and it’s incredibly educational. When he asked his listeners to share what they learned from their own experiences of grief, he got more than a thousand responses. That’s engagement.

“None of that would be possible if I had not experienced the loss of my dad, my brother. It made me the person I am today.”

He brings his journalistic expertise: the podcast and interview are sharp. But it’s not self-pitying or self-sacrificing. He’s doesn’t stress doing ‘grief work’. He does, however, explicitly discuss what the NYT interview describes as ‘how little he had allowed himself to feel the losses and how much more feeling he still had to do.’

Of course, having been born into a celebrity family comes with some advantages. His mother was famous, her death was widely covered, and the media collateral (like the photo below) is fantastic.

But he tells a solid story, right along Messaging Principle #3 “Use Stories” from the Serious Illness Messaging Toolkit). His work is a master class for all of us who are learning to tell better stories about the experiences that could get the public more curious about what’s inside palliative care.

In talking about his own story he brings a refreshing clarity for wanting to tell his story to the experience of grief. It’s about why feeling all the pain is — in the long run — worth it. That might just be the cornerstone palliative care story.

But note especially how the podcast is titled: “All There Is” suggests that this story is fundamental, something for every single one of us. “With Anderson Cooper” leverages the trust he’s already got with the public to be reasonable, credible, and worthwhile.

And even the podcast visuals are worth examining: he’s striking an upward optimistic glance, surrounded by adorable family memories. He’s smiling. He’s located in a relational network, surrounded by the many dimensions of his own life—making the point that grief is about your whole life, and all the stuff that’s great about a life.

As of July 2023, the podcast had >4 million downloads and according to Fast Company magazine, “the series' second episode was one of Apple's top-10 most shared podcast episodes of 2022”.