Gavin Newsom

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks with Anderson about growing up the child of divorced parents whose pasts were rarely talked about. Newsom witnessed his mom's death by doctor-assisted suicide and says it's only now that he has come to terms with what happened and the impact it had on him. This and other episodes of All There Is are available at cnn.com/allthereis or wherever you get podcasts. Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Chuck Hadad, Grace Walker, Emily Williams, Madeleine Thompson Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin Kari Pricher and Polson Kanneth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Before we get into the show, here's something worth your time. Every day, animals across the country face abuse, neglect, and cruelty. And every day, the ASPCA shows up. They rescue animals in crisis and provide life-saving medical care. They help animals recover, and they give them the second chance they deserve. But they can't do it alone. Every rescue, every medical treatment, every safe place to heal depends on people who choose to help. If you'd like to be part of that work, visit aspc.org/need. Become a monthly donor today, and you'll help support these life-saving rescue efforts

• 0:45Speaker 00

  and provide the care, shelter, and love these animals urgently need. And for a limited time, the ASPCA will send you a free gift as a special thank you. Again, that's aspc.org/need.

• 1:01Anderson Cooper?

  Welcome to All There Is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. My guest today is a politician, but we aren't talking politics. Gavin Newsom is the governor of California. In 2002, his mom, Tessa, left him a voicemail. "Gavin, if you want to see me," she said, "you should probably do so before Thursday, because that's going to be my last day on Earth." She'd been battling breast cancer for four years and had decided to die by doctor-assisted suicide, which was illegal in California. Newsom was by his mom's bedside when she died. He's written a book about his life called Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. I spoke to him last week.

• 1:42Anderson Cooper?

  You had a really interesting childhood and a really strange, bifurcated existence in a lot of different ways.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. My father just took off, was sort of broken by two campaigns for local office.

• 1:54Anderson Cooper?

  He ran for two offices back-to-back, lost, spent the money he had. He said he had basically a nervous breakdown later. But the extent to which, like, your dad and your mom did not talk about stuff with you...

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Never. And I didn't even know why they got divorced. I never knew that story about my dad. Until I discovered some audio recordings that were done that my dad did. Uh, near the end of his life with other family members. And I listened to them and I'm like, this explains everything. Not only does it explain the thing they never talked about, mom and dad never talked about the, the reason they divorced. But also explained why my mom was so aggressively insistent that I not get into politics. And she never expressed why. She just constantly pushed me away from politics. And to understand then the origin story of their breakup. Uh, and the fact that my mom had to become an adult. Very quickly with two young kids. She came from no wealth, no money, just hustled to make ends meet.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  My father was distant in every way, financially and otherwise. It explains so much of why I have doubts, anxieties, fear, resentment. Anger and it's allowed me just to let it go and now to understand more deeply and to, you know, and frankly apologize for many of those emotions. Um, and those aspersions that frankly I cast against them, uh, when I was growing up.

• 3:16Anderson Cooper?

  There's a couple of parallels that I found really interesting. I grew up not talking about anything.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21Anderson Cooper?

  I also had dyslexia. I, I'm not sure what my diagnosis was. I used to go see a doctor. I was, it was spotted early, unlike with you and, and I was told about it, unlike with you and. But it, I don't think mine was as bad as you.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Now, there's a kid in the back of the classroom, literally soaking hands still, still happens a lot sweaty. Under the armpits, a heart pounding, shy beyond words and, uh, and felt like I was dumb. And actually knew I was dumb because I just wasn't smarter than anyone else, spelling bees, the whole thing.

• 3:52Anderson Cooper?

  There's a moment when your mom is trying to help you read and struggling with it. Can't really do it. She closes the book and she says to you, it's okay to be average, Gavin.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  The worst words of, I mean, I'll tell you, if I look at my life, that may have been the most piercing thing. I resented her for years and years.

• 4:14Anderson Cooper?

  For, for that long?

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. You don't want to say that to your kid. And I struggle with that and I, I'm not, I kid you not. Only through the process of writing this book did I forgive her. Because now as a parent myself with four young kids struggling and just like I get the exhaustion and it's what she was saying and I really believe she was saying it's just just be yourself. You don't have to be someone else. It's okay. Let it go. And I didn't and it was a chip on my shoulder. It's you know, and I don't think it's there like it was before. And you know, look, I don't want to overstep. I want to paint an overly negative picture.

• 4:53Anderson Cooper?

  But she had her, she had, she had secrets. She had.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  She had all these struggles. I never, she never revealed them. I would, I just, I lacked the curiosity to really push her on it and want to engage. When she was a kid, her father, my grandfather, was drunk, which was a daily occurrence, and had a gun and put the two girls, my mom and her twin, up against the mantle of the fireplace and said he was going to kill them, put a gun right to their head, until my grandmother, Jean, came in and calmly put them down and then he passed out. She never told me that. I learned about that. I didn't know about my grandfather's suicide. I didn't know what shaped his drinking. I didn't know what shaped his suicide.

• 5:36Anderson Cooper?

  He had been a prisoner of war, the Japanese, during World War II. He ended up shooting himself in, in his bed.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and how that must have shaped my mom. And we never talked about that. The first few years of her life, she was so traumatized in that house. It was a house of horrors, they described it, and later learned, and she didn't even talk for years, quite literally, didn't talk.

• 5:57Anderson Cooper?

  And your mom and her, had their own kind of language.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  And it was sort of this gibberish. She would speak to Annie and Annie would be the one to sort of translate her to the real world. See, all those things, I wish I knew. Because then I would have known my mom. And then I would have known myself better. She, like, her father, like a lot of members of the family, I mean, she, the sadness for her was she would get home and open that jug of Safeway white wine.

• 6:25Anderson Cooper?

  So she drank too?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it was, she wasn't, she drank, but in a different way. It was just, it was almost medicinal. It was just a. Gone out and she'd wake up at four thirty five in the morning, seven days a week was at work. I mean, I, she, when people talk about three jobs, that's three jobs are quite literally the jobs on the weekend, not just the two jobs.

• 6:45Anderson Cooper?

  She was working like a waitress one day, other jobs.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Ramona's Restaurant, part-time bookkeeper. She worked for Aid to Adoption of Special Kids That Abolte Family Intellectual and Physical Disabilities.

• 6:56Anderson Cooper?

  You wrote in the book, you said, "I was trying to solve the riddle of my identity, the question put there by my learning disability in the vastly different worlds that she and my father had presented to me. As I grew up, trying to grasp which of these worlds have either suited me best, she had worried about the persona I was constructing to cover up what she considered a crack at my core. If my remaking was skim plaster, she feared it would crumble, it would not hold me into adulthood." What was the crack at your core?

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Well, I just, this young man in a hurry. I was just seeking something, validation, external affirmation. I was just hustling and I didn't take time to pause, I didn't take time to gauge reflect. And my mother, advanced breast cancer, had gone into remission the first time and it came back and I frankly took it for granted because I was like, oh, she'll be okay.

• 7:45Anderson Cooper?

  You wrote in the book, you said, "My way of dealing with her illness was to spend even more hours at work."

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I was doing.

• 7:50Anderson Cooper?

  You ran from it?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course I ran from it. I was just totally, fully absorbed by myself. I'm running a few businesses. I'd opened a wine store at a college, a restaurant, was involved in some other businesses. It was on the county board of supervisors and, you know, I'm so blessed to have an amazing rock star sister and she absorbed the emotional side of all of it. And so I felt like, okay, that's being taken care of. My sister's got this. And so I'm just going to try to take care of what I can take care of. Just go, just grind. I was very distant from her and she leaves me a voicemail and she says, "Hello, that's your mom. Next week, if you're interested, I will be my last day of life and if you want, you should stop by." And I remember calling my sister right away and saying, "What the hell's going on?" She's like, "What the hell's wrong with you? Why haven't you been

• 8:35Speaker 02

  paying attention? Mom's suffering and she's doing this assisted suicide."

• 8:39Anderson Cooper?

  Your mom literally left you a voicemail saying, "Thursday will be my last day on earth."

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I have it. I have it on a small, little. You know, went to, back to Walgreens, little tape recorder with the old tapes. And I kept it, and I don't know why I kept it. I mean, it was, it was such a sad and pathetic thing that she felt she needed to do that, to leave me a voicemail, because otherwise I wasn't gonna return her call, I wasn't around, and sort of the finality of it. And again, talking, you know, you talk about psychology and Patton interrupts, that was, you know, that was her just scratching the record player. Get out of your routine, man. Pay peen attention to me. Wake up, grow up. So, it was, that was kind of the plaster. I put a mask on, and my face was growing into it. I was becoming someone that I'm, that I'm not. Someone I didn't necessarily like, someone that was unworthy of being her son.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  And I started to spend a little more time with her, and I didn't realize the pain she was in, just the physical, excruciating pain, pain she was in. And, you know, try to boil a hard boiled egg, she couldn't eat, and it was just, you know, canker sores in her throat, and the cancer treatments, and the body had significantly deteriorated. And, and so it made me deeply understand, and, boy, I'll tell you, deeply revere the doctor who was willing to do this, it was illegal at the time. That last few hours, friends and family came over in her apartment, everyone, I came a little late, they had all said their goodbyes, she's in her bedroom, preparing for the assisted suicide. And the last two she wanted to be with were my sister and I.

• 10:11Anderson Cooper?

  When you came in, she had a photo of you and your sister on her chest, and she said, "My works of art."

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Works of art, yeah. And, so you're there, it's emotional, you don't know what you're, I'd never experienced anything like this. And, with two of us were in there, looking through old photographs, sort of 1970's old pictures, and she was describing the moment, and talking about, you know, her relationship to that moment. And she had, I remember, there's a bottle of pills, and my only job was, the doctor said, "Would you have her take these 20 minutes before whatever time the doctor was coming?" And so that was my job. And I just remember, and I remember saying, "Mom, you need to take these two pills," which was gonna prepare for the actual cocktail. And, in the process of those 20 or 30 minutes we're talking, you could tell she was just

• 10:58Speaker 02

  sort of getting looser, and more relaxed, and my sister was getting more anxious, more, and she's holding, we're holding both her hands on both sides of the bed, as she's looking through, and the two of us trying to show her pictures, and the stories. Doctor comes in, and my sister just, you know, then... That it's real and he does what he does and she's crying, I'm crying.

• 11:20Anderson Cooper?

  So the doctor administered the whatever the cocktail was.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  The cocktail and he beautifully, what a, like an angel. I mean, he.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Um, an angel. Uh, he passed away years ago. I never got a chance to thank him as well. I risked everything, talk about, you know, put his license on the line and just so cobbly. And, you know, said goodbye. Um, and when he left, my sister really started to break down and, and she looked at me and I said, you could go. I remember you could go. And she said, thank you. And just left and I was there and just for those last minutes and those breasts, there was nothing, this is not, nothing romantic about this. I mean, it was like violent, the breasts. You're like, Jesus, what am I doing here? And holding her hand and then.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  And this stillness, but stiffness. And I just put my head on, on, on her stomach and it distended. And just bawling, same to her muttering to her for 20 minutes of things I couldn't, I didn't have the guts to say 20 minutes before, feeling like, you know, it was like the, talk about the mask, like grow up, man. It was just that moment. And, um, you know, I had a resentment for years about that, too.

• 12:45Anderson Cooper?

  Resentment that she asked you to be there?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, again, through the lens of this sort of shitty son that was, was about me, but it wasn't about me, right? But I was like, who does this? Who, who, who would like invite someone in to see this, the experience? Like I saw the trauma of my sister. I'm like, she's not, we, we've struggled with this. Like, should we have done this together? But I kid you not, once again, this, I mean, this is why everyone should journal and write. I didn't know. I have never done anything like this. In the process of writing this, I also, back to, it's okay to be average. I was like, wait a second. I was holding her hand. She's still, I'm still holding her hand. Breath, that's my breath. It's

• 13:30Speaker 02

  the last breath. And I'm like, oh, God, what a gift. What a gift. Like, how blessed am I? Thank you. But she's not around for me to say it. And so, you know, what I have to do is, I have to be a better husband and father to my own kids and make up for all of that. But that was hard.

• 13:49Anderson Cooper?

  You view it as a gift now?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I didn't. I really feel the breath. I feel, there's this thing, just this notion of this letting go. It's powerful. I didn't, I've never had the feeling of understanding that, of a breath. I feel, for 57 years, like, just all wound up. And just accepting, just accepting. Things I can't control, just accepting them. Things I can, taking account and responsibility to be better and more.

• 14:18Anderson Cooper?

  More of my conversation with California Governor Gavin Newsom in just a moment.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Every day, animals across the country face abuse and neglect. And every day, the ASPCA shows up to rescue animals in crisis. But they can't do it alone. Visit aspc.org/need. Become a donor today to provide the care and shelter these animals urgently need. And for a limited time, the ASPCA will send you a free gift as a special thank you. Visit aspc.org/need.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. We're going to talk about rethinking how we die. How we think about death in the first place greatly informs how we live. Our guest is Dr. B.J. Miller. He's a hospice and palliative care physician.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  We are aging as a people. This is a worldwide phenomenon that we are aging and therefore getting closer to the end of life on some level as a group. It's not at all surprising that you'll see a revving up of interest, services, and also sort of anxiety that pushes us away from the subject and makes us cling to life.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:41Anderson Cooper?

  Welcome back to my conversation with Governor Gavin Newsom. Do you feel grief?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  I feel...

• 15:51Anderson Cooper?

  Because not everyone does, or it has different meanings for different people.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really, it's such a basic question, isn't it? It's interesting, just as you pose it. I feel loss. I feel regret. I feel inadequate. Just inadequate. I feel grace, humility. I feel, I guess, human.

• 16:14Anderson Cooper?

  Do you miss her?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Oh, God. Jesus. I mean, I, Anderson, in the book, I talk about, I had a one speech that I have to read and periodically will do a teleprompter thing was with my inaugural speech when I got elected governor and my little two-year-old, or three, whatever he was at the time, Dutch, with his pacifier, you know, right out of Central Casting Kid. All of us had those moments with our kids and ran up on stage as I'm speaking and I'm terrified to look off the teleprompter because I'm just, there's no way I'll get back on the script. And everyone's staring at the kid running on the stage. My wife tried to grab him and he's running away and he eventually just lands on my leg and I'm in the middle of the speech and I'm just staring there.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  And I just instinctually lifted him up. And he puts his, just puts his head right in my, you know, just like, and he starts falling asleep. And I'm reading the speech and I'm like, and I swear to you, like, oh, where's my mom to see this? Because that is someone she would have been proud of. That moment, that's what she wanted me. I'm sorry, man. Jesus.

• 17:29Anderson Cooper?

  Let's take a look at that moment, actually.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. Now, more than ever, we Californians know how much a house matters and children

• 17:40Speaker 02

  matter.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  No. Because so many of our neighbors have lost theirs. We will support parents. They need support, trust me.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  So that they can give their kids the love and care that they need.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  My biggest fear, you know, my wife's biggest fear was, you know, what kind of dad are you gonna be? You gonna be your father? Uh, or are you gonna be? She didn't know.

• 18:20Anderson Cooper?

  Well, that was actually a question of mine. How do you break that cycle?

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it just happens. It's like you're struck by lightning. And I didn't, you know, I was, I remember just the birth of my, my oldest who just turned 16. Just incredible. And, and it felt like lightning when she was swaddled. And I was like, like, oh, oh, thank God. Like, I'll tell you the coolest thing for me. Like, actually. And if you have a 14-year-old boy, you can appreciate this. Like, he leaves, and I'm gonna embarrass him now. But when he leaves, I was like, love you, love you. 14. And I'm like, man, that's called at winning. Like, I'm like, uh, that's, and that's the same boy that texted me saying, Dad, did I hear you might run for president? He goes, you can't do that.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  We're still too young and we need you around.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Life.

• 19:15Anderson Cooper?

  I now, I have a four-year-old and an almost six-year-old. And, um, I'm trying to do all the things which don't come naturally, which is to talk about myself to them and show, you know, my own sadness or my own joy or whatever it is.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  I try to say I love you every time I talk to them. And sometimes I fall short. And it's the greatest thing in the world because my dad can never do that.

• 19:41Anderson Cooper?

  Your dad, even on his deathbed,

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:43Anderson Cooper?

  a home attendant

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:45Anderson Cooper?

  said to him

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:47Anderson Cooper?

  Tell your son you love him and he didn't.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  It was right after I got elected. It was the night of my election after the, after you may have announced, literally Anderson, you may have announced the results of the California governor's race. I'm sitting there with my father. He's in his wheelchair. It's a miracle he lived that, uh, to see it.

• 20:04Anderson Cooper?

  He was keeping himself alive to see you elected.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  For literally this moment.

• 20:07Anderson Cooper?

  He was hugely proud.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Uh, it was everything. And that's in, and she-

• 20:11Anderson Cooper?

  It was everything he wanted to be.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Everything he wanted to be. And this was like, I mean, come on, California governor. His mayor was extraordinary to him, but governor, this is ridiculous. And, uh, and then she says, you must be so proud, Bill. And everyone's egging him on. And he does this Gleason thing. Oh, you know, the old Irish thing. He's just, uh, joy to be, you know, some, you know, thing. A little, or he quotes Yates or something. When in doubt, he always quoted Yates. And I couldn't say it, but I never doubted he did. Never doubted he did. Cause he told all his friends. And they always told me. They said, I was with your father last night. He's so proud of you. Watch this. I'm like, come on, man, tell me. So I never felt that distance in that respect, but I also never felt that direct connection.

• 20:54Anderson Cooper?

  I listened to a podcast you did with David Axelrod a long time ago.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Oh gosh, yeah.

• 20:58Anderson Cooper?

  You were saying that your dad, as you grew more athletic.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:02Anderson Cooper?

  Your dad gravitated more towards you than he had previously.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  No, now I'm interesting.

• 21:07Anderson Cooper?

  Right, yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  I'm sorry to say it like that. I was always an interesting, yeah. But all of a sudden I was the captain of my basketball team. And all of a sudden we're in the playoffs. All of a sudden I'm leading scorer on the team. And all of a sudden I'm hitting 400 baseball and, uh, getting some college recruits. And all of a sudden now his, showing up with his friends because their friends are like, hey, Bill, congrats. But it was wonderful. Cause I had him back.

• 21:34Anderson Cooper?

  He was bringing friends to, to see you play.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And look up there. I'm like, oh my God, dad's there. And you're just, you're performing for him, man. You're diving now. You're not just going the ball. You're diving for the ball and you're dying. At the end of the day, for the thing that you really were longing for, and that is gonna take you to dinner. And you're gonna have dinner with dad.

• 21:52Anderson Cooper?

  He would have dinner with you, but he would bring, it was with friends.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Never one on one. I don't think I've ever had one on one dinner with my dad.

• 21:59Anderson Cooper?

  He couldn't be alone with you.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:00Anderson Cooper?

  He never really opened up to you. He, he was charming and could tell a great story, but if you were looking for truths of who he was, or his past, or you weren't gonna get that.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Not gonna get it. And he came from a very strict household, old Irish Catholic family, and very religious. And so, the certain things were just not discussed at all. And he certainly passed that down, but boy, was he a great storyteller. What a wonderful friend, and what an extraordinary father he became. And he's, he's my sense of idealism. He's the spirit, he's the pride I have in public service. And you combine that with my mom's grit, and hard work, and dedication, ah, this blend. And, but yeah, he was, he became such an extraordinary example to me. But again, he didn't raise us.

• 22:52Anderson Cooper?

  Did you have anybody who you confided in when you were a kid? You couldn't really talk to your dad, couldn't really talk to your mom?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  No, I mean I-

• 22:59Anderson Cooper?

  You developed, I developed a very strong internal conversation in my head, and a, and a very, a voice in my head, which may be a psychopath, I'm not sure, but is, is, is an unreliable narrator at best. And, but yeah, I didn't really have anybody I ever talked to.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  No, I was, I, I, I did the same thing on the basketball court in the backyard, for hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours. Playing baseball, just throwing the ball against the hardwood wall, and then, you know, throwing the ball in the air, and it's the bottom of the ninth, and I'm on center field, I'm, just those narratives that would shape. And then, candidly, try and be like Remington Steele, and Pierce Brosnan, and literally furrowed bow, that which I wish I would get rid of now, that I think I started creating when I was in high school. And literally just looking around, and trying to see who I could become, who can I absorb.

• 23:57Anderson Cooper?

  And Pierce Brosnan, that was, that Remington Steele is the model.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 24:00Anderson Cooper?

  See, for me, it was T. Lawrence or Colonel Kurtz.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  So.

• 24:05Anderson Cooper?

  Yours is better.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Sorry, much better, much better. Mine's been more deranged as well.

• 24:09Anderson Cooper?

  Yeah, mine were like psychopaths.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Psychopaths. But I think, and you may have discovered this with your learning differences, you tend to overcompensate in other ways. And one of the overcompensations is the gift. It's the superpower. And that is the ability to absorb and read the room. You recognize that pain in other people, and you're more sensitive to that. And you can absorb that. And I just, look, I think that's, at the end of the day, it's a hell of a lot healthier than those that have no shame, no empathy, or those that assert that empathy is somehow destroying Western civilization. This one in the mess individual has done. It's not about aggression. It's about empathy, caring, and collaboration. And that's what strength looks like. And, you know, I found that strength in my parents, and I did.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  For all their imperfections, for my imperfections, those are the gifts they gave me.

• 25:01Anderson Cooper?

  Gavin Newsom, thank you so much.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  It's great to be with you.

• 25:05Anderson Cooper?

  Gavin Newsom's book, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, is out now. This week, we're bringing you an extra podcast episode. This Thursday, you can hear my conversation with Robert Irwin. His dad, Steve Irwin, who was a conservationist and TV star, best known as the crocodile hunter, was killed when Robert was just two years old. Steve was shooting a documentary underwater when he was killed by a stingray. Robert Irwin has followed in his dad's footsteps as a conservationist. You may also know him from Dancing with the Stars.

• 25:36Speaker 05

  I'm a very sentimental person. And my dad was like, he was kind of like Indiana Jones, right? When you walked into his office, it was like a museum. I mean, he's got like Maasai spears on the wall, and he's got like swords from, like, he's like proper-

• 25:55Anderson Cooper?

  It's exactly what you would imagine his office to be.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  Literally, his office was like Indiana Jones. And I remember, I would often, you know, just walk in, and everything was left pristine, exactly the same, right? Nothing was touched. And sometimes I would just walk in, and I felt like I was in like, I don't know, like sacred ground. Don't touch anything. Don't breathe on anything. And I would kind of just look, just, just on my own to just sort of get, I don't know, feel him again. And then one day, I went, you know what? I don't think he's gonna mind, so I started taking stuff. I went in and there's all of his shirts on a rack that he used to wear, all his khaki shirts. I looked at that and I went, I wonder if that fits me. So I popped it in the wash, I put it on, I'm like, yep, that fits. And I'm like, great, I'm gonna start wearing his shirts.

• 26:40Speaker 05

  He had a watch on the, on the table that was sitting there, always told the same time. And I went, I'm gonna get that thing working again. And got it working and started wearing it. And now it's like this really powerful thing. It's like, almost like it was, that was like this stepping off point to be like, he's this almost like untouchable part of my life that is like held stale in time. But then I kinda went, no, no, no, no, I can, I can embrace that. I can bring that in, into my world. So that was kind of really, that was really powerful to me.

• 27:13Anderson Cooper?

  That's really awesome.

• 27:13Speaker 05

  It was, yeah. Do you know what I'm, you know what I mean?

• 27:16Anderson Cooper?

  Yeah, and it also gives new life to these, these things which become, you know, draped in memory and maybe sadness and, and, you know, are frozen in time, as you say, and it, it brings them alive again.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Brings them alive again.

• 27:32Anderson Cooper?

  And it brings him alive in a way. It's a great conversation and it'll be available Thursday, March 5th at 9:00 PM Eastern. You can watch it on CNN.com/AllThereIs, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Then next week, on Thursday, March 12th, join me at 9:15 PM Eastern for my live streaming show, All There Is Live. If you haven't seen it, you can catch an old episode on CNN.com/AllThereIs right now. And if you missed the live stream, it'll be posted the following day on that website for a week. Thanks so much for listening. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone.

• 28:07Speaker 06

  Get ready for election night. CNN is available to stream live now with an All Access subscription. Plus, get exclusive content and interactive Q and As with CNN's journalists. Subscribe now. Visit CNN.com/AllAccess.

• 28:22Speaker 07

  I'm Audie Cornish. I'm Ari Shapiro, and it's Engagement Party. It is Engagement Party. And we get to talk about what we're obsessed with, what we're engaged with, what we need to process with a friend. Rick Steves, what a legend. Rick, as somebody who has traveled the world for many years, do you notice cities looking more and more similar?

• 28:40Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's becoming more homogenized, especially in cities. If you want diversity, you go to small towns. And it's disappointing, but in a way, it's reality. Everything is mass consumption. Everything is efficiency. And when you have a chain, it's hard to compete if you're an individual mom and pop. And more and more people are traveling and people are driving that. So yeah, it's an interesting issue.

• 29:05Speaker 07

  Follow Engagement Party. Wherever you get your podcasts.