What interests me about my job is being able to go places and step into people’s lives.

 “For a long time, I chose not to be vulnerable, but I think I don’t want to do that anymore.” How has becoming a dad affected your vulnerability? That’s a really interesting question. What I’ve realized in the last couple of months is how little I allowed myself to grieve my dad’s and my brother’s deaths. I did what a lot of kids do: I buried it deep inside. It’s only doing the podcast that I had this realization of, Holy [expletive], I’m still this 10-year-old kid. In terms of acknowledging grief and sadness and allowing myself to be vulnerable, I don’t know exactly how to do that, but that’s what I’m looking to learn. I used to see this sadness behind my mom’s eyes. I want my kids to not see that behind my eyes. I don’t want it to be behind my eyes anymore.

What interests me about my job is being able to go places and step into people’s lives. The business side of news — I used to worry about this stuff 20 years ago when I first started. I would stay up at night: “Do I have a future? What are my ratings?” That was not sustainable for me. I don’t like that sort of pressure. For me, the solution was to focus on what I had control over: getting better at interviews, improve my writing, stop saying “um.” I get all the business stuff. It just doesn’t interest me. *

Anderson Cooper