Anderson Cooper (CNN Political Commentator)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] Experts on expert.

[2] I'm Dan Shepard.

[3] I'm joined by Monica Mouse.

[4] Hi.

[5] Hi.

[6] Hi.

[7] End of the year.

[8] Oh, man. It's the end of the year.

[9] It's our last interview.

[10] Of the year?

[11] Uh -huh.

[12] I don't like that.

[13] I'm sorry.

[14] Okay.

[15] There'll be a new year with more interviews.

[16] We can't take our foot off the gas.

[17] We've got to keep it pegged, bored to the floor.

[18] We have Anderson Cooper today.

[19] Oh, what a great last interview of the year.

[20] Particularly fun for me because, and this comes up in the interview, But as soon as I knew we had Anderson coming up, I had this anxiety of like, all I'm going to want to talk about is the Vanderbilt's because I'm obsessed with Cornelius Vanderbilt.

[21] And I was like, shit, he's not going to want to talk about Cornelius Vanderbilt.

[22] He's lived in the shadow of it.

[23] Well, by God, his fucking new book is about it.

[24] And I was like, oh, my God, this is so wonderful.

[25] He has a new book called Vanderbilt, the rise and fall of an American dynasty.

[26] And if you don't know this about Anderson Cooper, his great, great, great grandfather, I believe was Cornelius Vanderbilt, you know, shipping, ferry.

[27] railroad, first 100 millionaire, first tycoon.

[28] So he tells us all about that family history and it's so fascinating.

[29] Also, he's so handsome to look at too.

[30] Anderson, oh yeah.

[31] Yeah, big time.

[32] He talks a lot about his anxieties and stuff, which we get into.

[33] It's great.

[34] It was really fun.

[35] We wanted to nurture him, of course.

[36] Yeah, of course.

[37] Our favorite thing.

[38] Please enjoy Anderson Cooper and check out his book, Vanderbilt, the rise and fall of an American dynasty.

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[41] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[42] Oh, my Lord.

[43] Can you hear me well?

[44] I can.

[45] Wow.

[46] Your guys are there.

[47] You're living there.

[48] We're here.

[49] I know.

[50] I feel the same way looking at you.

[51] Like I'm just...

[52] This is very straight.

[53] You're alive.

[54] You're on the computer.

[55] You're a real person.

[56] We think.

[57] Yeah, I got a room and everything.

[58] Got a hat on.

[59] A big light behind you in case it's needs.

[60] Of your chair, though, my God, your chair, the discrepancy, first of all, the senior chair is startling.

[61] Thank you.

[62] The incongruity?

[63] Well, you must know that we select our own chairs, so this is not.

[64] Well, I'm believing, obviously.

[65] This is like a Roar Shack test.

[66] Are you kidding me?

[67] You should tell you a lot about us.

[68] I am function over fashion, and she is fashion over function.

[69] I could care less how it feels, as long as it's beautiful.

[70] Interesting.

[71] Well, I got to say, I think, Monica, you went on both accounts.

[72] I mean, that doesn't look comfortable, Dax.

[73] That looks like...

[74] Watch this, Anderson Cooper.

[75] No, I know.

[76] Look, that, no, okay, that's good.

[77] It's zero gravity.

[78] Is that really comfortable?

[79] I just feel like you're too vulnerable.

[80] No, this is going to speak immediately to our different socioeconomic upbringing.

[81] So in my blue -collar neighborhood, you are the king of the castle if you had a lazy boy, and I think that's why it feels differently to me. I'm sure it does...

[82] I'm sure I've loaded on all this importance to it that doesn't exist.

[83] No, actually, I think that's an interesting socioeconomic take on it, which I hadn't considered See, I didn't believe things should be too pleasurable.

[84] I believe that there should be suffering involved.

[85] And to enjoy something too much like that, it's like opening yourself up to weakness.

[86] An indulgent.

[87] Well, you must know Paul Bloom, so we just interviewed him, and that's his new book.

[88] I mean, you should try to schedule in a good deal of suffering to have a meaningful life.

[89] I fully am on board with that, yes.

[90] You know, I was born a wasp.

[91] We don't believe in too much enjoyment or happiness, and what little we have, we push deep down inside.

[92] Oh, and we're going to get into the many layers that is the Anderson cake.

[93] But I got to start with a couple of just cursory things I want you to know.

[94] A, I fucking love you, like a huge fan, really, really excited to be interviewing you.

[95] Two, I can't tell if I met you or I had an extremely protracted dream thinking I met you.

[96] So I hope to clear that up.

[97] And then third, to set the full table, as it was leading up to this interview, I was a little bit like, what's going to be annoying about this interview is I'm a Cornelius Vanderbilt nerd and I'm going to want to talk to him about, I'm not kidding, I'm going to want to talk to him about this so much and he's not going to want to talk about that.

[98] And then your goddamn book is Vanderbilt.

[99] So when I started researching you, I was like, oh, this is such a dream come true because I'm obsessed with Cornelius.

[100] Okay, by the way, the first time anybody has ever said that sentence to me. That they're obsessed with Cornelius Vanderbilt?

[101] Yeah, anyone who's like, yeah, Beneath the age of, like, 70, and whose last name is in Fanderbilt.

[102] Yeah.

[103] Well, just to let you in on the Red Crumb Trail that led me to him, as I got recommended to read Titan of you, Red Titan.

[104] Of course.

[105] It'll just love it.

[106] And then so I just went on this course of the patrician class, the original tycoon.

[107] There's that great book about your great -great -grandfather, the first tycoon, that's incredible.

[108] And to see the difference between your great -great -great -grandfather and say, what do you...

[109] Four greats?

[110] I don't know.

[111] How many grates is it?

[112] I do that all the time.

[113] Before I wrote this book, I honestly could not have told you how many greats it was.

[114] I didn't know who his son was that I was related to.

[115] I kind of knew who my great -grandfather was, but he also had the name of Cornelius.

[116] It was all very confusing.

[117] Yeah.

[118] And then, of course, you got to fold in Carnegie in there.

[119] And so just, I think I'm obsessed with the notion of how those three people navigated their life so differently.

[120] Yeah.

[121] And how they created their wealth was so different.

[122] I don't know.

[123] I just find it fascinating.

[124] So I'm so fucking delighted you've written a book on this topic.

[125] Now, can we clear up number two?

[126] Do you have any memory of us meeting?

[127] I feel like I have, but I too, it's interesting you said the dream thing, because there are entire events in my life that I'm still to this day not sure if it was a dream or if it actually happened.

[128] I had an experience in what was then Zaire in Central Africa in 1996 that I swear to I was there and this crazy thing happened, I'm still not entirely sure it happened.

[129] This is why you need a travel buddy at all time.

[130] So what was the crazy thing that may or may not have happened?

[131] I mean, it's too long to really go into.

[132] Well, then it's a dream.

[133] I can answer it right now.

[134] So basically, I don't, so there was the genocide in Rwanda.

[135] Yes.

[136] In 100 days in mid -1994, April.

[137] And I was there briefly.

[138] I'd spent a lot of time in Rwanda over the years, going back to when I was like 17.

[139] I was fascinated by Central Africa.

[140] I was obsessed by Zaire as a kid.

[141] Rwanda's right next door to what's now Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire.

[142] Monica, you look like you've already fallen asleep.

[143] No, I'm here.

[144] This is my listening face.

[145] I promise.

[146] Actually, truly what was happening is Rob's taking pictures, and I'm now hyper aware of when Rob's taking pictures that my face doesn't look disgusting.

[147] So I'm trying to...

[148] I'm managing a lot.

[149] Okay.

[150] So anyway, the Hutus who were behind the genocide, they were gradually forced out of Rwanda.

[151] as the RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, came in and took back the country, and there were the current leadership, and they stopped the genocide.

[152] A lot of the people who committed the genocide and their families were in camps in eastern Congo for about a year.

[153] And then there was a small rebel movement run by a guy named Kabila, who came down from the north, and he pushed the Hutu extremists out of the – he got them out of the camps, and a lot of them started walking into – deep into Zaire, just around the time of the fall in Mabutu, They end up outside Kisangani in the north, and I happen to be there, and this group of untold numbers of people arrived after having walked reportedly for a year from the camps and end up stuck in like a jungle location outside the town of Kisangani.

[154] I get on a motorcycle with like two folks.

[155] I was at ABC News at the time.

[156] I was there covering the fall of Mabutu.

[157] We each get a guy who has a motorcycle, and we're like, each of us are a passenger on it.

[158] So it's my cameraman, my sound guy, my producer, Clark Benson and I, we all go, we drive like five or six hours along like cow paths through the forests and jungles, and we find this group, and we do a story.

[159] I interview them.

[160] I talk to them.

[161] And can I ask really quick, this is like impromptu, right?

[162] You're there for Mubutu, and now this is a reason.

[163] But now this is happening.

[164] So anyway, I'm there.

[165] I interview you.

[166] them.

[167] Then we'd go drive the same five or six hours, whatever it is back.

[168] Anyway, we put together this story.

[169] It doesn't make air because of a whole bunch of internal reasons.

[170] It's ABC at the time.

[171] Peter Jennings didn't like the story or something.

[172] But it haunted me. And within a few days, as in my warped memory, they all disappeared.

[173] They all vanished.

[174] All the migrators.

[175] All of them.

[176] All the people who had gotten there were gone.

[177] And then there were all these reports.

[178] that local forces had come and wiped them out and that they were just gone.

[179] And so I found it to be this kind of haunting thing of, like, what do you mean?

[180] All these people just disappeared.

[181] That doesn't make any sense.

[182] And your story never aired, so did you even do that?

[183] You know, like, now you've got to me. Yeah, well, yes.

[184] Yeah, I know.

[185] Oh, my God.

[186] I do have some B -roll.

[187] I've got some pictures.

[188] I took pictures of me talking to these kids.

[189] So I have the pictures.

[190] And then I ran into a guy doing Syrian refugees who were coming and landing on this Greek island.

[191] And the guy who was running a camp for, I think it was the International Rescue Committee, happened to mention this incident and that he was there.

[192] And my mind was blown.

[193] I was like, you were there.

[194] It happened.

[195] It really did happen.

[196] And so, yeah.

[197] At any moment did you think, oh, the fucking simulation, like it got a grid mix up.

[198] Like, it put this character from a previous situation in this current time frame.

[199] Sometimes it does make mistakes of simulation.

[200] We found a couple.

[201] Yeah, that's actually the fun of being in the simulation is looking for the little glitches.

[202] So this must be a big week for you guys with meta.

[203] Now we're all going to be...

[204] I refuse to learn what it is.

[205] I've seen, like, three people have sent me links to it.

[206] And I was like, you know what?

[207] I'm not going to give my time.

[208] I just refuse until I'm participating, I guess.

[209] But, you know, what you say is, like, I saw.

[210] from it too, which is it's a fallout of privilege, which is like you and I most certainly could have met each other.

[211] So it's like, we must consider the notion that we could have and we don't want to be rude.

[212] But what is your feeling that we met?

[213] Oh my God.

[214] So I have this like hazy memory of we're at this kind of event and it's kind of outdoors and you're maybe reporting on something, but then you and I end up going to the side and just chatting a little bit and it's during COVID, but it has to be fake.

[215] Like I feel like I was in Connecticut or something.

[216] This is not adding up.

[217] No. I don't think this happened.

[218] Okay, good, good.

[219] Because, A, I can tell you, the number of events I've been to in my life is small.

[220] No, no, no. This was like you were reporting on something.

[221] Oh, okay.

[222] For some reason, what's that?

[223] Fuck it.

[224] It's sounding more and more preposterous.

[225] At any rate, I have long wanted to meet you for a whole host of reasons.

[226] I think I had an awareness of you, but what really got me into you, which happens almost 100 % of the time is you did the third segment profile on 60 Minutes.

[227] And I am, I've said there's so many times I'm here, like, in the weirdest way, 60 Minutes is my religion.

[228] It was on every Sunday at my grandparents' house.

[229] It was on when we started eating dinner.

[230] I just, the noise, I have all this Pavlovian response to it.

[231] It just makes me feel great.

[232] Yeah, and I watch it.

[233] I watch it every Sunday.

[234] I DV art, but whatever.

[235] I love that fucking show.

[236] And in your segment where I then learned that your mother was Gloria Vanderbilt, I already had this interest in the Vanderbilt.

[237] Just the whole profile, I just was like, wow, you have such an incredible story.

[238] It's so fascinating.

[239] There's so many themes in it that I like.

[240] But I think what I'd like the most, if I could, just for a minute, is like, yeah, you grew up.

[241] I assume it was an Upper East Side or something.

[242] Somewhere nice in Manhattan.

[243] And then you just start regularly throwing yourselves into these insane situations, be it, like you said, Rwanda, or you're down in Africa.

[244] You just keep putting yourself in all these bizarre places.

[245] And I remember being 20 so much.

[246] having like this crazy desire to be somehow adventurous in a Hemingway way and to find a voice in these travels.

[247] And I just was curious, like, what was leading the charge to all these bizarre drop -ins for someone who went to Yale or probably was on a certain path?

[248] Yeah, one, I didn't feel I was on a certain path, and that terrified me. Like, the fact that I had no idea what a path I could possibly be on or would be on is I had no actual skill and had grown up in this very strange environment and amazing and privileged environment, obviously.

[249] Both my parents had been very creative, but my dad died when I was a kid, and I viewed my mom lovingly, but as a emissary from a distant star that had burned out long ago, and she was on the ship that got away, and it crash landed in New York, and she gave birth to me, and I had to, like, help her learn how to breathe oxygen and rent an apartment.

[250] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[251] So when my dad died, it became very focused on.

[252] survival.

[253] And when you're 10 and you lose a parent, for me at least, it completely changed who I was and how I thought about things and the world became a very scary place.

[254] Well, is it too much to say that you become at that point?

[255] You become your mother's son and partner.

[256] Oh, yeah, I wasn't son.

[257] I was the chairman of the board, sort of that that's how I viewed my, like I desperately wanted a board of my own to give me advice.

[258] But in lieu of that, my mom looked to me often for advice and counsel and I would try to give her counsel even things I knew nothing about but like you know she spent a lot of money and I knew that was going to be an issue and we were kind of on a sinking ship and I would give her advice like things I just read like you know mom saving money is making money I didn't really know what it meant but it sounded kind of good and it sounded like something like I know she like spending money so she must like making money so saving is making money.

[259] But at a certain point, I realized like 13 or so that I needed to start like preparing my own kind of lifeboat.

[260] I started working because I wanted to earn money and have a bank account.

[261] I started modeling when I was 13 because it was the only job I could get and it paid pretty well if I could do it.

[262] And yeah, I started taking like survival courses in the wilderness.

[263] And then I left high school early and rode on a truck across sub -Saharan Africa from Johannesburg to Bangy in the Central African Republic.

[264] And then I had to go back and graduate with my high school class but hold on before we move on from there we're going too fast we're going hold on hold on hold on hold on and the risk of offending you there's some psychoanalysis here that i want to sure because so i didn't grow up around a dad right i mean i saw him occasionally but i was in deep search of kind of defining my masculinity i wonder if for you as well coupled with knowing you're gay i don't know what age you came out as gay but like that being some weird dumb stereotype being in Upper East Side Rich Kids and Stereotype?

[265] Like, did you feel at all you were like, Teddy Roosevelt going to the ranch?

[266] Like, I'm going to go do some gnarly shit to dispel any of these thoughts that I'm a Lily White rich kid?

[267] Okay.

[268] Yeah, okay.

[269] Absolutely.

[270] Yeah, I mean, I knew I was gay since, I don't know, six or something, seven.

[271] I really knew I was gay once I saw Robbie Benson in this cheesy basketball movie called One On One, and he was so cute.

[272] I got to check that out.

[273] Well, that's hard.

[274] Well, hold on Anderson.

[275] I think that's not the one to decide if you're gay or not, because I think even a lot the straight guys were like, yeah, I would definitely make out with that little basketball trot and curly -haired son of a bit.

[276] Well, it was funny because years later at college, I was on a crew team, and we would go down at Tampa to train in spring, and we'd, you know, had nothing to do, but we'd so we'd go to blockbuster and rent a movie.

[277] And when night, I was like, oh, yeah, we should rent this basketball movie.

[278] Went on one, Robert Benson.

[279] And then we watched it, and I'd forgotten why it was that I'd liked it so much, and we start watching it, and it wasn't a great movie, but they were all like, what the fuck is this.

[280] I was like, oh, yeah, no, this isn't when I thought it was.

[281] Yeah.

[282] But yeah, I wanted to test myself so that I could sleep at night and learn that I could survive in most situations.

[283] I felt like the worst thing has already happened to me, my dad dying, I became what I called a catastrophist because a pessimist seems so negative.

[284] So a catastrophe sounds kind of sexy and exciting.

[285] So I wanted to know that I could prepare myself for the next catastrophe that would inevitably come.

[286] Well, and can we add your brother to your older brother had killed himself, which you're really surrounded by death and fatality.

[287] Yeah, my brother Carter died by suicide when he was 23 and I was 21.

[288] He jumped off the balcony of our apartment building in front of my mom.

[289] But that for me, again, was like the capper on the journey I'd already been on.

[290] I can't believe I used to a journey.

[291] But yeah, that for me was kind of the final push of, all right, now I I'm just going to go to wars.

[292] Like when everything falls apart, I want to know what that looks like and how you deal with that.

[293] Okay, so this is so juicy.

[294] I have a similar kink.

[295] And so I'm wondering, as a child being a partner and being kind of the chairman of the board, you don't have time to indulge emotions.

[296] Like that is a skill you develop very quickly, right, to compartmentalize, to ignore.

[297] And I guess for me, that even became something.

[298] now I regret.

[299] But for some period of my life, I was like, that was a point of pride for me. Like, I'm not shook.

[300] Like, shit gets crazier and crazier and I love it.

[301] Yes.

[302] But it's a result of trauma, right?

[303] I mean, no, that's absolutely true.

[304] And also, I wanted to test myself in, like, stoicism wasn't a thing then, but if it was, I would have been, like, it's lead champion.

[305] I mean, like, I wanted to go out into the edges of the world.

[306] And there was this cheesy moment in dances with wolves with Kevin Costner.

[307] And there's a scene in it where he's riding a horse in front of gunfire and he throws his hands wide and he just opens himself up to it and rides through it.

[308] And that in my mind was like, that is what I want.

[309] Yes.

[310] In the absence of the father, did your mom have boyfriends that were in and out?

[311] She did sort of, which I was all for.

[312] And I wanted, like, I didn't want to be the only one insulting my mom.

[313] You needed help.

[314] Yeah, I needed to fill out the board a little bit, and, but the ones who I would push her toward were the ones who were responsible, had some money, had a profession, had an interest, and that would never work with my mom.

[315] So her excuses were always like, he likes to watch baseball.

[316] And I don't know how to argue with that.

[317] I mean, I...

[318] He owns a lazy boy.

[319] Right, he is a lazy boy.

[320] No, she would have loved a lazy boy, actually.

[321] She would have thought it was the most exotic thing.

[322] It's called a lazy boy.

[323] She called me up a couple of, there was one time when she called me up like a year before she died, and she was like, have you ever heard of this Dr. Phil?

[324] He's extraordinary.

[325] He tells it like he sees it.

[326] As a kid, and you're just a little bit older than me, but as a kid, Vanderbilt jeans were fucking enormous.

[327] Like that was all the range.

[328] Was that not a super profitable empire for her?

[329] It was.

[330] I mean, it wasn't who.

[331] Her empire, she didn't own the business.

[332] She had licensed her name to it, and she was doing all the promotional work for it, and she was very involved in it and working really hard and traveling all around the country and stuff for it.

[333] She made a lot of money from it, but it wasn't ownership.

[334] It wasn't a long -lasting thing.

[335] So at a certain point, and I don't know what the term was, the contract ended, and that business continued.

[336] I think it's still out there today, but there's no royalties from it or anything.

[337] Her attorney at the time was a guy named Tom Andrews, who, hooked up with my mom's psychiatrist at the time, whose name was Chris Zoyce, and they went in league against my mom, and they bought all, like, her licensing stuff for, like, home furnishings.

[338] They were both disbarred.

[339] Tom Andrews lost his law license.

[340] Chris Zoyce lost his medical license.

[341] Last thing I heard is he's, like, running old age homes in Florida somewhere, I guess, through his son or something.

[342] But, yeah, so she was never able to, she wanted judgment against them, but she was never able to recoup any of the money.

[343] So, yeah, my mom was taking advantage of.

[344] You had your hands so full, it's bonkers.

[345] Yeah, it was a lot.

[346] Here's my last question for you, just to tie up this whole scenario.

[347] I'm projecting here.

[348] But having had a relationship with my mother that was that as well, complicated, and I filled some facets, it made me a commitment fob because I had been committed at a young age.

[349] I totally get that.

[350] Yeah, that's interesting.

[351] So, oh, let me just ask you the permutation for you.

[352] Are you a commitment phobe right away, or do you like delve deep with somebody, assess them, think you can solve them, be happy to solve all their problems at first, and then once you're in it, you get annoyed and you're stuck as the person to solver problems and it just drives you frigging bananas?

[353] Yeah, I'll go one step further.

[354] So, yes, it's get deeply in love.

[355] The second I realize they love me, I start panicking that I'll be one day delivering this terrible news to them that I'm leaving because I don't want the responsibility.

[356] And then, yes, I'm a fucking control freak because that's the only way I can trust somebody is to know that I can control everything about them.

[357] That's the only way I can feel safe.

[358] That's a train.

[359] If I just leave it to them, I'm going to be the victim of all their whimsy.

[360] The control thing doesn't happen to me, but I totally realize I tend to.

[361] attract people who see me as stable and as I can make things happen and I'm caring and all of which is true, it's so normal for me that that's what my initial go -to is to, like, solve somebody's all their problems and stuff.

[362] But then gradually over time, it starts to annoy me because I, of course, secretly want somebody who can do that for me and never even occurs to them.

[363] As soon as their credit score hits 800 again, you're out.

[364] You're like, okay.

[365] I feel like, you know what?

[366] My work is done.

[367] You're better for knowing me. Monica, please.

[368] This is a tricky question.

[369] I almost asked it earlier to another guest.

[370] I do think it's a theme, but it makes it sound blammy, which is not what I'm getting at.

[371] But do you think, like, at an early age when you start catastrophizing and you go in with this mentality that I don't want to say you manifest, some of that stuff, but it starts appearing everywhere because it's at the top of mind.

[372] Like, you're thinking about tragedy, you're avoiding it, and then it's everywhere.

[373] That's interesting.

[374] Well, you quite literally went in search of it and found it.

[375] Yeah, I mean, that's interesting.

[376] My initial thing is I don't think I believe that.

[377] I do think you're right in that, you know, I talked to Malcolm Gladwell a couple of, I don't know, it was probably years ago now, and we were talking about optimism and catastrophism, and I was telling him how my mom was an optimist and was an eternal optimist.

[378] and all the terrible things that happened to her.

[379] She was able to still be vulnerable and open and trusting.

[380] And he said your mom was right.

[381] That's the way to live.

[382] Your mom was happier.

[383] And she would be right 95 % of the time that most people wouldn't screw you over.

[384] And I believe that is true.

[385] I don't know that I manifest it, but I do think it does not allow me to enjoy things very much.

[386] Because my mom would say, like, the phone can ring and your whole life can change.

[387] And I'd be like, yeah.

[388] Yeah, the phone can ring, and your whole life can change.

[389] Yeah.

[390] So I expected to ring in a negative way, and, like, I'm braced for it.

[391] I'm always ready for it.

[392] And, yeah, so I think, yeah, I think, I wish I was not this way.

[393] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[394] We've all been there.

[395] Turning to the Internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers and strange rashes.

[396] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[397] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[398] Hey, listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[399] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[400] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[401] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[402] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[403] What's up, guys?

[404] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[405] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[406] Every episode, I bring on a friend.

[407] and have a real conversation.

[408] And I don't mean just friends.

[409] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[410] The list goes on.

[411] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[412] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[413] I relate so much to you.

[414] I guess this is the way it could potentially manifest itself or the way it did in my life, right?

[415] Which was, so I grew up around, it's so boring for everyone that listens to the show is a trillionth time I've said, but I grew up around a ton of violence, ton, ton of violence, and I became someone who was trained myself to not be put off by it and get involved in it.

[416] And to the degree that I thought, I really convinced myself that people in my orbit really valued me because I would protect them.

[417] If something went down, I'm the guy that's going to run in and get busy.

[418] And I lived this way for years.

[419] And my wife finally said, you know, I don't feel safer around you.

[420] I feel much scareder around you because you're going to go to the next level at any moment.

[421] I just know that.

[422] Like, things could escalate to a crazy place.

[423] And when I heard that, it was like identity shattering.

[424] I'm like, God, you feel more afraid around me?

[425] And I swear to God, once I kind of decoupled from that, Anderson, I promise you.

[426] I'd see once a month some big meathead yelling at a woman at her car.

[427] And I'd get out and tell the guy to get in his car.

[428] I would see someone to grocery store being, like, I just would see it nonstop.

[429] And once I no longer had it as my identity that no one wanted me to do that, I mean the world couldn't have changed but I literally don't see that anymore I've not seen that kind of thing in years and I'm like that's...

[430] I don't think I've ever seen that sort of thing I mean that's very interesting the reason I even it occurred to me is I was sponsoring a dude in AA who had the exact same hangup and he kept telling me he's all mate I saw this fucking guy taking pictures of kids on the beach and I'm like I bet you did I bet you did I don't see that anymore okay back to you Monica you've given me something to think about now I'm going to reassess here.

[431] You're changing the course of broadcast history.

[432] You're saving lives while drinking your Perrier.

[433] Okay, good.

[434] So we answered the early childhood stuff, which I was really fascinated with, and then going to all the scary places.

[435] And then just how you built your career is really, really impressive.

[436] I mean, it just really is.

[437] You're just a hardworking motherfucker.

[438] You're meticulous.

[439] I don't know how you've done this for 30 years.

[440] And when I get to your Wikipedia page, there's no scandal part.

[441] Everyone's got a scandal part.

[442] Everyone's got a controversy part.

[443] You got none.

[444] Impossible.

[445] You're probably, you have good NDAs or something.

[446] I mean, I've made some mistakes, certainly, and I'm sure there's some scandal to come.

[447] I actually, I was on vacation a couple of years ago, and I'm not very good on vacation, as one can imagine, and I need things to obsess about.

[448] So I started obsessing on this vacation in Rome about that something I had done in high school, there's something I've done in high school and it's going to come out and I don't know what it is, but this is happening.

[449] And I was mulling this for a good three days, couldn't sleep at night.

[450] And I finally sat down and I wrote out a statement about it.

[451] I didn't know.

[452] There was no it there.

[453] I just wrote out a statement so that I knew when it happened, I didn't have to spend, an extra two hours crafting a statement.

[454] I have a statement.

[455] This is how you're spending your vacation.

[456] This is where you, Monica, and I really converge nicely.

[457] Because.

[458] Rumination.

[459] Oh, my God.

[460] Rumination is the worst.

[461] Planning for so.

[462] It really is.

[463] It's like deadly.

[464] I don't know if you've had your brains checked out lately, but if you ruminate a lot, you need to have them checked out.

[465] Oh, really?

[466] Yeah, rumination is seriously not good.

[467] Oh, we know.

[468] We know.

[469] It doesn't mean we still don't spend a good portion of our day.

[470] But it's hard.

[471] Anderson, I must get in 13, five.

[472] slash debates a day up here where I'm preparing every answer to every incoming assault.

[473] And these things never happened.

[474] You would think I'd learn.

[475] Well, that's the thing.

[476] Never happened.

[477] That's been a blessing for me of realizing I have been able to like step back a little bit and recognize that 98 % of the things I am obsessively ruminating and preparing for and writing statements for never actually happened.

[478] And so at a certain point, just rationally, you can say to yourself, okay, this may happen, but chance or it's not going to happen.

[479] And by thinking about all the time, I'm just having all the drama and the fear of it happening.

[480] But it hasn't happened.

[481] Oh, exactly.

[482] Well, and this ties into what we were just talking about.

[483] I mean, I think sometimes when you're in your head and you're coming up with all these counter arguments and all of these things, you are waiting for it to come.

[484] So, like, if me and you are having an argument, which happens quite often.

[485] Yeah, every couple hours.

[486] Yep.

[487] The argument will fly out of your mouth or my mouth because we've already pressed it.

[488] And it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[489] And sometimes you'll be doing this whole thing and I'm like, what are you talking about?

[490] Where do that come from?

[491] And I do the same thing, but when you're living in your head like that.

[492] When we argue it's like one of us is reading the court transcript from the stenographer.

[493] Like the whole court case already happened.

[494] And you know, and then I know you're going to say this.

[495] My problem is I don't talk to the people around me. So because I'm talking to myself and I'm working out into my head and I think doing a pretty damn fine job of it, I don't need to involve other people until it's already reached this conclusion.

[496] So when I present my conclusion to somebody, which sounds like a passing thought, and they start to weigh in, then it's just annoying.

[497] Because I've already yet been through every permutation of what they're going to say, and I've discussed it, and I've doubled back on it, and I proved it wrong, and to have to explain it to them is just infuriating.

[498] Oh, I couldn't agree more.

[499] Yeah, they had their day in court in your head.

[500] Yes.

[501] Their time to talk was a half hour going your head.

[502] I have heard your statement.

[503] I have heard what you said before you even knew you were going to say it.

[504] Okay, so why the decision to tell the story of your family?

[505] Well, first of all, my dad, died when I was 10, it grew a very poor Mississippi on a farm.

[506] And he wrote, toward the end of his life, he wrote a book called Families and Memoir on a Celebration about his family growing up and his long aunts and uncles and grandparents.

[507] and also his hopes for the little family he created with my mom.

[508] So my brother and I are in the book a lot.

[509] He really wrote it as a letter to my brother and I, knowing that he probably would not survive to see us grow up.

[510] And that, for me, was a life raft.

[511] It was a, I mean, that was a savior of that book.

[512] It's a book I reread twice a year.

[513] And to this day, all my memories are really from that book, I think.

[514] I'm not sure I even actually remember the events themselves.

[515] Right before my dad died in hospital, he asked us to get some tape recorders so he could record his voice talking to us and we didn't do it.

[516] Like we weren't allowed to go to the intensive care ward so we could, anyway, I had so rejected the Vanderbilt side of my mom's history that I just didn't want to know anything about it.

[517] It wasn't part of my survival -oriented plan.

[518] There was no trust fund.

[519] There was no dynasty.

[520] There was no summer cottage that people would go to and we'd all gather around and roast, I don't know what Vanderbilt's would roast around a fire if they did, but...

[521] Some wild game.

[522] Some wild boar.

[523] And so I thought no good can come of this.

[524] That was not who I was.

[525] I was like, okay, I'm a Cooper.

[526] I'll go with my dad's family.

[527] And that's the model I'll use to project myself forward, because that's the way I think you can have a happy your life.

[528] But when I had my kid, I realized, oh, I don't know what I'm going to say to him about this whole weird side of my family.

[529] And I honestly don't know what I would say because I don't know anything about them.

[530] and then I found this book that my dad had actually started writing about the Vanderbilt right before he died.

[531] And I thought, well, that's really weird.

[532] And like, he literally had a no, you know, a binder, it said Vanderbilt on it.

[533] And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to do this.

[534] And I just started doing the research, the writing of it.

[535] And I'm really glad I did because knowing about these people, A, it confirms the choices I made early on, which were based on instinct largely.

[536] But it also does, in a weird way, make me feel kind of grounded more in this city and in this country.

[537] And just, you know, there's a lot of people in America who cannot trace their lineage back, who were ancestors were brought here against their will.

[538] And there are not records beyond when they left a gate in West Africa or wherever they came from.

[539] And I was able to.

[540] And it does make a difference in my life, I felt.

[541] Like, even if I don't relate to these people in a intellectual or moral way, it's interesting.

[542] It makes me feel like there's been steps of me before me. Well, let me try to paint, like, a two -minute teaser for why the genesis of the story is such a fascinating one.

[543] First and foremost, I think Cornelius, he's first generation, right?

[544] His parents are Dutch.

[545] Yes.

[546] They're immigrants?

[547] Well, actually, not both.

[548] He's actually more English and he's Dutch, but the part of him that's Dutch is the name.

[549] The first Vanderbilt to come is the guy Jan Artsin in, like, the mid -1600s.

[550] He was an indentured servant, a poor farmer who sold his labor.

[551] to get a ticket on the boat and then worked out in Flatbush in Brooklyn and then his ancestors ended up in Saddam.

[552] So they're about three generations of Vanderbilt's poor farmers before this child was born.

[553] But he's a young kid and he's growing up on the waterways around Manhattan and he starts sailing this boat around.

[554] He gets good at it and he starts transporting people and then he ultimately gets into the steamship business which is pretty new and it is as tough of a business as you could get into because at the time, no one owned routes.

[555] You'd fight over a dock.

[556] There were these famous collisions between ferry boat captains where they'd fucking smash into each other and a hundred people would go up in flames.

[557] The boilers blew up.

[558] It was so tough and hard scrabble.

[559] And he built this empire by doing that.

[560] And just as a character, what's fascinating about him is this story might be apocryphal.

[561] Maybe you can tell me, but there was a point where he fought in the St. Patrick's Day parade or something.

[562] There was a middleweight champion boxer who had called him out.

[563] And then he got off a horse and fought this guy in the parade, like, as the richest man in New York.

[564] And my favorite part of him is he hated fucking shorters.

[565] There was so much corruption in the stock market at that point.

[566] There were all these inside traders that knew what stop was going to be put on the rail line and they'd short these stocks.

[567] And as his hobby, he started fucking busting the shorters.

[568] He was, like, policing the stock market because he had enough money and he could fuck them over.

[569] just a crazy individual and is, yeah, hard scrabble as a human community.

[570] Yeah, I mean, the thing that interested me about him was sort of the human side to him and the pathology of the money.

[571] And there have been a ton of really good books written about the Commodore's business acumen and all the stuff, his Supreme Court cases, the battles, his destruction of people.

[572] He once said to these guys he was going against in business, He said, I'm not going to sue you because the courts are too slow, but I am going to destroy you.

[573] And he said about destroying them.

[574] Well, and can we add, he would sometimes go to a competitor and say, here's the story.

[575] I'm either opening up a line directly next to you or you're going to pay me from now on $8 ,000 a month.

[576] Right.

[577] They would pay him not to compete.

[578] Yeah.

[579] To me, what was fascinating is like this kid is born to this family of not a very successful Dutch farmer who doesn't have much ambition, this English mother who saves up money.

[580] and is this strong -willed person, and at 11 drops out of school, the school is lame, and he starts working on his dad's a little parrauger, it's called, or peri -ogger, it's a shallow -bottom boat to ferry a few crates of vegetables here or there from Staten Island to New York, and literally pulling this boat through the water at times in the shallow water.

[581] It's a really physical stuff.

[582] He's growing up in the docks of New York.

[583] By 16, he gets his own boat.

[584] His mom gives him a loan of $100.

[585] There's about $1 ,600 today.

[586] and he buys his own little boat.

[587] And within a year, he drives his own father out of the ferry business.

[588] So in collusion with his mom, he fucks over his dad, gets him out of the ferry business.

[589] And there begins this, what he later in life called his mania for money.

[590] And he didn't care about the girls in his family.

[591] He had mostly girls because they would not inherit the name.

[592] Therefore, they weren't really Vanderbilt's.

[593] So his focus was on the boys, none of whom could ever live up to his expectations.

[594] One had epilepsy, actually was gay as well.

[595] So that person was weak.

[596] He sent him to a lunatic asylums.

[597] They called them them twice.

[598] Another son died during the Civil War.

[599] He actually died in the French Riviera, but he had been in the Civil War, but then he just, they, like, got sick.

[600] So they sent him the French Riviera and died there.

[601] The son who's epileptic ended up shooting himself in the head in a hotel room.

[602] The only son who was deemed worthy by the Commodore was his son, Billy.

[603] And it wasn't until he was like in his 50s that the Comptych.

[604] Commodore saw a little sparkle in him when the sun screwed the Commodore over in a minor business deal.

[605] And the Commodore was like, ah, he got the best of me. This guy has something.

[606] He's going to get the entire fortune.

[607] And that's what he did.

[608] It's like succession almost.

[609] It's like succession and the crown next together.

[610] It's, uh, yeah, it's pretty incredible.

[611] Yeah.

[612] And he was the first person to amass a hundred million dollars.

[613] When he died, he had $100 million, which was more money than was in the U .S. Treasury.

[614] And it was one out of every $20 in circulation.

[615] in the United States at the time.

[616] That's, I'm so glad you just said, because that's also relevant when you look at Rockefeller's worth.

[617] He got to a billion dollars in the 20s, and yeah, it actually is a significant percentage of the total amount of money in America.

[618] A hundred million dollars is a lot of money, but you think, I don't know, somebody makes that for their Netflix special these days.

[619] $100 million back then was not only did have a lot of buying power, but it just nobody had that level of money amassed.

[620] And then his son, Billy, who inherited all the money, goes on, only lives eight more years, and he more than doubles it.

[621] He doubles it to $230 million.

[622] Oh, so the first son was...

[623] Yeah, he was the only one who increased the fortune, and then every subsequent generation, it was just siphoning it off.

[624] Some of them worked.

[625] You know, my great -grandfather, Billy's son, worked.

[626] He was on the boards and stuff, but he wasn't innovating.

[627] They weren't pushing the railroads farther the west than Chicago.

[628] Who built the Biltmore estate?

[629] Because as a kid, I went there in Asheville, North Carolina.

[630] And at the time was the biggest house in America, it may still be.

[631] It's like 150 bedrooms or something.

[632] George Vanderbilt, who was one of Billy's sons, yeah, it's an extraordinary house.

[633] It's really the only house that's still in private family hands.

[634] I mean, it's a relative of the Vanderbilt's, I forgot what their last name is.

[635] And they've done a really smart job in monetizing it, having it open to the public, and yet still having a private hands.

[636] All the other ones, a lot of them tried to do that in the 1940s.

[637] 40s and 50s to sort of keep their houses going to kind of open them up to the public.

[638] But they ended up mostly either, most of them were all torn down or sold for little money to historical societies.

[639] Well, did they fall into this well -worn pattern over in England, which is there's all these people that are lords and whatever, and they inherit this property and then it bankrupts them?

[640] Like, just owning the property ends up bankrupting them.

[641] Yes.

[642] In England, that's a big thing.

[643] So much so that are in the turn of the century, late 1800s, a lot of English lords would come to America to find a rich American heiress who would be able to pump their new blood money into the old castle.

[644] So this happened to my great uncle, my great -grandfather, his brother, Willie Kay Vanderbilt, both of whom were the sons of the guy who doubled the fortune.

[645] Willie Kay was like a party boy.

[646] He married this southern woman named Alva, who broke the Vanderbilt into New York society.

[647] She had a daughter named Consuelo, and Consuelo was forcibly married off to the Duke of Marlborough who owned Blenheim Palace, which is like a, I don't know, 200 or 300 -room palace in England, and like first cousin to Winston Churchill.

[648] So my great -uncle's daughter became the Duchess of Marlborough, miserably so, and Vanderbilt Money replenished Blenheim Palace and enabled that to continue going.

[649] Oh, my God, that is so fascinating.

[650] I would love to hear your armchair psychology of these people.

[651] I guess initially, like when I hear that the grandson, Bill's son, the Biltmore House, my guess is like he's not going to accomplish anything of significance in the working world.

[652] So he's going to erect this monument.

[653] That'll be his accomplishment.

[654] So at the time, whether they actually believed or not, which I think they probably did, but there wasn't an American architecture per se at the time, just as there wasn't a a cult of celebrity in America at the time because newspapers back then couldn't print photographs.

[655] So nobody knew what anybody really looked like.

[656] So there weren't famous people who were visibly identifiable.

[657] So if you saw Cornelius Vanderbilt walking down the street, a lot of people wouldn't know what he looked like.

[658] Wow.

[659] He punched you in the mouth.

[660] I mean, Cornelia, the common order, they wouldn't know this, probably.

[661] He's a big guy.

[662] But they viewed the building of New York society, like high society, as kind of a nationalist project, as like giving America a clearly identifiable social class.

[663] And what they did is they looked to Europe and they borrowed things, mostly French things.

[664] Like a lot of these houses are filled with fireplaces from palaces in France ripped out.

[665] They would literally rip apart palaces and bring them over.

[666] Like it was French food that was being served.

[667] People would learn French.

[668] There were these dances called quadrilles that would be performed at these parties.

[669] It was based on a French dance.

[670] And so for Georgia Anderbilt and the others, I mean, part of it was, it was conspicuous consumption.

[671] It was, we have this money.

[672] It's a statement of power.

[673] It's a statement of eternal power.

[674] We believe this is going to last forever because we just have so much money we can't imagine it's not going to last.

[675] And we are just going to show ourselves to be the heads of society.

[676] And so the building of the palaces was in many ways, I'm not so sure on Buildmore because of where it was built.

[677] But certainly all the palaces that were built in Newport, Rhode Island and in New York, and there were a dozen or so Vanderbilt palaces in New York City.

[678] Bergdorf -Goodman and department store was my great -grandfather's house, the entire block of 57th Street, 58th Street.

[679] Oh, my God.

[680] And there were probably six or seven other palaces, Vanderbilt Palaces, along Fifth Avenue in that area.

[681] They were viewed as a nationalist project, almost like, this is America's face to the world, and America can be on par with Europe, and these are our grand mansions.

[682] And so that was sort of the official kind of thinking, the reasoning.

[683] In truth, it was competition.

[684] The Vanderbilts were the Nouveau -Riche Arrevis when they came on the scene.

[685] The Commodore was like this uncouth guy who had died of venereal excesses, as they called it, cursed and spat tobacco and didn't give a shit about going to fancy dinner parties.

[686] He didn't build palaces.

[687] He lived in a comfortable house near Washington Square Park, but not on the park.

[688] And he just wanted to make money.

[689] And it's in New York society at that time, you had to be two generations removed from the awful making of the money in order to be accepted in society.

[690] So the people who made the money, their hands were too dirty.

[691] So like Caroline Astor, who at that time ran New York Society, her grandfather, he made all the money for the Astros initially by slaughtering, catching and killing beavers and selling beaver peltz.

[692] So his hands were drenched in beaver blood.

[693] Yeah.

[694] So Carolyn Astor had to be two generations removed from the blood of the beavers all in their hands.

[695] And if you go to Astor Place, the subway stop in New York, it's why there's beavers on the ceramic tiles around the name Astor Place.

[696] Oh.

[697] It was all based on bever blood.

[698] So the Commodore was too uncouth to be part of society, as were his children, because they were just one generation.

[699] But the grandchildren could be.

[700] So it was my great -grandfather and his brother Willie Kay.

[701] and they were the ones who had the first entree to society and they had smart wives who grabbed, like, saw the opportunity, they had no money of their own, they married into this family, they're from the South, and they went about this project of getting the Vanderbilt's to be New York Society with a vengeance, and they succeeded very quickly.

[702] Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

[703] Why was he obsessed with money if he didn't want to spend it?

[704] Money was power, money was freedom.

[705] He wasn't going to be like a gunslinger, but with money, he could do anything.

[706] I think it's relevant to paint a picture of what late 1800s in New York City was as well.

[707] I think the context of that time, it's like my story about the ferry boat captain smashing into each other, there was no regulation of anything.

[708] It was still a place where it was kill or be killed.

[709] That was the mentality.

[710] If you rip people off and you were cornered and you weren't scum, you were out -savying people.

[711] It was a way different place Manhattan back then, where it's just like strength was everything.

[712] There just were not rules in place.

[713] There weren't taxes.

[714] You could build all these houses because there were no inheritance taxes.

[715] There were no income tax.

[716] There weren't income taxes.

[717] There weren't death taxes.

[718] So they just imagined this was going to go on and on and on.

[719] And then once the tax codes changed, suddenly you have a hundred room palace on fifth avenue and you need 40 servants who all suddenly have to be paid actually like perhaps some sort of a wage.

[720] and it's unsustainable.

[721] It's just not possible.

[722] I have to imagine they told themselves as well that this entrance into high society was an investment.

[723] I could see where they thought like, oh, well, this is going to somehow protect our fortune.

[724] If we are people of status and power, that's going to perpetuate this thing further.

[725] But I also think they just believed that they deserve this.

[726] And yes, it all came from Grandpapa, the Commodore, who most of them probably did not like very much.

[727] I mean, he was not a very likable guy, but I think they imagined that he would just go on eternally like that.

[728] This was their birthright.

[729] They were Vanderbiltz.

[730] My grandfather, who I knew nothing about, my mom didn't know anything about him.

[731] My mom's dad, he'd die when my mom was 15 months old.

[732] He inherited probably, I think, $7 to $10 million.

[733] He drank his life away.

[734] He died at 45 violently of cirrhosis of the liver.

[735] His esophagus exploded and blood splattered the walls of his bedroom as he died and he lied he died in debt because he had gambled away he would gamble a hundred thousand dollars at night at restaurant at del monocos in new york he killed two people with his automobile and nobody seemed to care he hit a seven -year -old child with his car and the press blamed the child for getting in front of the car oh wow it was a time when to be a vanderbilt yeah nothing could really touch you it seemed i find it stunning the waste of my grandfather's life and the chances he had to have actually done something with his life.

[736] I find it really sad and pathetic.

[737] But I think they just felt this would go on and on.

[738] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[739] And you just touched on one of my questions, which was going to be what presence of addiction is in this lineage?

[740] Because I just would imagine that you on paper have the perfect life.

[741] But of course, course, inside of the perfect life, it's not, no one's life's fucking perfect.

[742] And so the only real escape from that is substances.

[743] I have to imagine it was rampant.

[744] People always look at the Vanderbilt men as sort of the ones running the family.

[745] The truth is, the dynasty, as it was, would have been much better served if the women were in charge of it, because they were forces of nature.

[746] Most of the women who came into the family, married into the family were from the South.

[747] The common or late in life got rid of his first wife.

[748] He sent her to a lunatic asylum, just like he sent his son to a lunatic asylum twice.

[749] It was a fix -all for him.

[750] He had an M .O. Yeah.

[751] Right.

[752] Well, she was going through the change, and she was being unreasonable when he wanted to have sex with the governess.

[753] So she went to the lunatic asylum.

[754] Right.

[755] Right.

[756] Well, that is on her.

[757] To know Cornelius was to be put in an asylum.

[758] You know, people put a lot of people in boxes.

[759] He put them actually in boxes.

[760] The Commodore, he was too busy making money.

[761] He didn't care about drinking that sort of thing.

[762] I mean, I'm sure he drank and he smokes cigars and stuff.

[763] He had his primary addiction was that.

[764] Yeah, yeah.

[765] What's interesting to me, and that's really what the book is about.

[766] It's about what proximity to this money does in the lives of multiple generations in this family, because it's not just having the money that affects the life.

[767] It's having proximity to the money and yet not having access to the money.

[768] Like if you're a daughter of Commodore Vanderbilt, you're given $10 ,000 when you're married, but that's it.

[769] And yet, you know, there's $100 million going to be assigned to somebody, and you want it to be you.

[770] And so there's all the machinations that go along with it.

[771] And it's the absence of money in the life of the Commodore's epileptic gay son who the Commodore thinks is weak, so therefore not entitled to really any money at all.

[772] And the Conrad gave him a few hundred thousand dollars over the years.

[773] But he just saw that as an insult.

[774] And there was long litigation, the siblings fighting each other.

[775] So to me, it's really interesting about how the mania of the common or that pathological desire for money, how it infected the subsequent generations and how it infects generations even for those who won't get that money, which is why, again, I mean, my parents sat me down when I was eight or nine, and I didn't know anything about like trust funds or what those were, but they explained to me, look, people are going to look at you, especially now that your mom's jeans business thing is really taking off.

[776] People are going to look at you weirdly.

[777] They're going to think you have this huge trust fund.

[778] somewhere, that there's some pot of gold waiting for you.

[779] That is not the case.

[780] No matter what you hear or read about it, that is not the case.

[781] We're doing fine.

[782] Your college will be paid for.

[783] But there's not more than what you see on the walls of this apartment.

[784] And it was a revelation to me in a very freeing way of, oh, I don't have any connection to this stuff.

[785] And I can make my own course.

[786] And that was the greatest thing they ever told me. Okay.

[787] So now here's where you and I can have a, we can have a good debate here.

[788] I'm way more obsessed with money than I would like to be.

[789] I really, really have valued it my whole life to an unhealthy degree.

[790] And I've read what you said about what you're willing to leave to your son.

[791] And of course, I'm in a similar situation.

[792] And Kristen and I fight about what they'll get and this and that.

[793] How old are your kids?

[794] Six and eight.

[795] From my own point of view, just see if you find any merit in this.

[796] I coveted it so much that it became a fairy tale to me, money.

[797] And I had a whole idea of what having X amount of money would feel like and what the experience would be like.

[798] And it wasn't those things.

[799] And in fact, it was all the processes that led to me getting that money that really is what I liked.

[800] And it's been a very long road for me. So all I want is my kids to get passionate about something.

[801] Now, if they get passionate about teaching, fuck yeah, go be a teacher without the fear of like, oh, I can't make ends meet.

[802] Like, I like the idea of like, you do whatever sets you on fire and know you can, you can still live in this house.

[803] I'm going to give you this house.

[804] Like, don't ever be motivated out of this.

[805] But I see the fear that you have, and I have a great deal of it as well, but it's just interesting.

[806] My thought is kind of like, maybe I could actually unburden them from that pursuit.

[807] And if money results from their passion, awesome.

[808] If it doesn't, whatever, they're making ends meet.

[809] What are your thoughts?

[810] I've gone around my head on this for my entire life, so I totally understand.

[811] I've heard your argument before.

[812] I've discounted it.

[813] Let me explain to me why you're wrong in a way that you can understand.

[814] I'm kidding.

[815] I don't think you're wrong.

[816] Look, I certainly understand what you're saying.

[817] And I preserve the right to change my mind down the road.

[818] This is not some ironclad thing.

[819] I mean, I said that I believed what my parents did for me, which was freeing me from this idea that other people were putting on me or would have put on me that there was a trust fund for me. They made it clear there is not.

[820] And your college will be paid for.

[821] but after that you need to find your way and that's what I think most people go through except I also would not be burdened with student loans which was a huge thing obviously that was a huge, huge relief to know that although I was eight so I didn't even know what student loans were but as I came to know I realized that's a huge gift but I like that model and if I can interject one second not only did he say it and everyone knows it the reason I know it I've been asked in interviews that I've given recently like Anderson Cooper said he's not gonna like literally always become one of those things where I fucked everyone over by saying how often I bathed my kids and then everyone got asked that.

[822] So this is very similar.

[823] I've had to answer this fucking question because of you.

[824] When Google came around, I would Google my mom's name sometimes just to see what was going on with that and it would pop up that she has $200 million and that I'm the sion of a $200 million empire.

[825] And every time I see that, I would be like, wow, that's really funny.

[826] And right before my mom died at some point, we had the best like two weeks before she died, an incredible, incredible time together.

[827] At one point, she said, she was like, you know, I bet people think you're going to inherit a lot of money.

[828] I was like, yeah, actually, Mom, I read it was $200 million.

[829] And she was like, wow, they're going to be surprised.

[830] And sure enough, when she died, the New York Post had a thing of like, I'm now going to inherit $200 million.

[831] So anyway, even though in 1996, they published this front page that my mom was dead broke.

[832] And I was like, I wanted to refer them.

[833] to their own reporting from 1996.

[834] First of all, I don't think focusing on money is a great idea for anyone growing up.

[835] If you can avoid it, it infects the way you see yourself.

[836] And I grew up, I was desperately afraid of how am I going to support my mom when she goes completely bonkers and spends all the money?

[837] How am I, like I had a nanny growing up who I loved.

[838] She was my mom for all intents of purposes.

[839] She's old.

[840] She's going to get fired at some point.

[841] How am I going to pay for her?

[842] for the rest of her life and take care of her and get her a house and all this stuff.

[843] And that would keep me awake as a kid.

[844] I mean, every single night.

[845] I was literally writing notes on, like, how much money I would need to get them.

[846] I didn't know anything, but I was imagining this stuff.

[847] So I don't think that's a healthy thing either for a kid to have.

[848] But I do think that drive that I think I was born with, but I also think was cultivated and amplified by that feeling of fear and sadness and whatever else it was and rage, I think was a huge propellant that has propelled me through a lot of things that might have crushed me. And I look at my brother, who was two years older than me and smarter than me, better looking, far more intelligent, and far more sensitive, who died by suicide at 23 in front of my mom.

[849] And the only thing I see different between us is he didn't prepare himself in this course of study that I did on how to survive in any situation.

[850] And I think he believed a little bit in that mystique of the Vanderbilt thing.

[851] I'm not saying that was, I mean, obviously there were emotional issues and mental health issues and stuff.

[852] But I think he had a sense of, you know, his middle name was Vanderbilt.

[853] And I think that was a mistake.

[854] I would never give a child that name, even if it's hidden in the middle.

[855] Also, when anyone says your name and they say Anderson, and v. Cooper, it sounds like you're suing yourself.

[856] Which is inevitable.

[857] But I also don't want my son or any child I have to grow up to be obsessed with money.

[858] And I mean, I think ultimately, I think if money is the focus, I think it's a losing game because you'll never have enough of it.

[859] And look, this is a high -brow conversation to even have because for most people, money isn't a benchmark of anything.

[860] It's money you need to live on and have a decent life and get things for your kids and stuff.

[861] But if you're able to make enough and if your goal is making money, I just think it's never going to be enough.

[862] And I don't think that's a healthy thing.

[863] Well, I agree with you in my own journey with it is what it represents to me is safety.

[864] Totally.

[865] And safety is an illusion, for starters.

[866] Yeah, I could be a billionaire and fucking get throw cancer tomorrow.

[867] You know, what did it really safeguard me against?

[868] So it's this illusion of safety and realizing it is a fear.

[869] So I have enormous fear of financial insecurity, and fears aren't rational, and they can't be combated with more and more money.

[870] They actually don't bear any witness to reality.

[871] So I need to confront that fear in a way other than just accumulating money.

[872] But again, I had to first get the fucking money to realize that.

[873] It's interesting to have this conversation because it's not a conversation I would normally have with people because it's not...

[874] It's not endearing at all.

[875] No, it's not sympathetic.

[876] Yeah.

[877] Right.

[878] Everybody has reactions to it and it's totally understandable.

[879] I would as well.

[880] I just think, I hope my kids have passion for something and interest in something.

[881] And as like you, it doesn't matter me what it is.

[882] And I want them to feel like they have to work in order to make it happen.

[883] And I happily will be there.

[884] I hope to be a present parent for as long as I'm alive and as long as they want me in their lives.

[885] But I just think growing up for the first 20 years of your life, with this idea that, oh, well, you know what, there's this pot of gold waiting for me. I think you need to be grounded a little bit in, okay, find an idea that's going to work and make it happen.

[886] I agree with you, but the only thing I'll say is that I think when we identify money being the problem, we're getting close.

[887] But the money actually represents, in my opinion, something else.

[888] So there is a way in which your children can be entitled and you can do everything for your kids and you can solve everything for your kids.

[889] And guess what?

[890] those kids are going to have no fucking ambition, no drive.

[891] They can't get through any challenge.

[892] And that doesn't even require money.

[893] And I do think with people with money, they often solve everything with their money for their kids.

[894] And then it does create this outcome that then gets correlated to the money, but I don't know that it's causality.

[895] I think it separates you from people.

[896] And I think it separates you from having to deal with, oh, okay, you know, it was a revelation to me when I learned that Disney World has for, or I guess for people who pay more, there's like a way to get faster on the rise.

[897] Yes, yes, yes.

[898] And I mean, I loved Disney World when I was a kid.

[899] And part of me, for me, the experience was standing on those lines waiting to get on the ride and being unhappy about it and impatient about it.

[900] And yeah, I would have liked to at the time have skipped the line.

[901] Or like being part of, like my parents never were part of any clubs.

[902] So like we had a house at a Long Island and there was a very fancy beach club.

[903] and it was a beach club that clearly had very restrictive policies and my parent just didn't believe in being part of any club that would restrict people in any way.

[904] I only had one friend who lived across the street from me in this place and I spent every summer there with my one friend.

[905] So it would have been nice to have friends from that beach club probably but I'm glad they didn't make that choice.

[906] Okay, so here's the, yes, you just hit the essence of it.

[907] So I was deciding to take my daughter to Disneyland for the first time.

[908] She was five.

[909] And we can go with a guide because, A, my wife's a fucking Disney princess, so they'll extend that to us.

[910] We could do that, right?

[911] I'd forgotten that, actually.

[912] Yeah.

[913] So I'm evaluating, what lesson do I want to teach her?

[914] So I want to teach her you fucking wait in line.

[915] That's part of the experience.

[916] And then I also have to weigh, also people want to take pictures with their dad.

[917] Is that fair to have her whole day at Disneyland spent me taking pictures with people?

[918] So these are really, I think, at least, that's a hard decision for me to make.

[919] Yeah.

[920] I ultimately is like, no, we're standing these fucking lines.

[921] And by the way, you can't even ride more than three rides there.

[922] It's so fucking busy.

[923] And I did it.

[924] So I think that's, and now I'm pat myself on the back, but like that's the decision over you're getting money or you're not getting money.

[925] It's like, along the way, she doesn't witness me by our way out of discomfort with money.

[926] Right.

[927] Yeah.

[928] But then it's like the airplane thing, right?

[929] Like when you're flying with your kids and you have the ability to fly as nice as you can, do you not do that?

[930] because you want to teach your kids.

[931] I would not pay ever for a private plane just because I feel like, you know people born in the Depression have a Depression -era mentality?

[932] I believe everything will be taken away from me. So the idea of spending, do you know how much these private planes cost?

[933] Yes, yes.

[934] I looked into it one time.

[935] It's unbelievable.

[936] But these are all like little markers I have in my head, like trip wires.

[937] Like if I start to do that, it's all going to start to fall.

[938] And I have to like, keep up the standards.

[939] But private, private is another level.

[940] But let's just, just first class.

[941] Like anyone who's flown first class knows it's extremely preferable.

[942] Like, we flew home from London recently first class.

[943] And because a production was paying for it, but still.

[944] And I'm like, these kids are six and eight and flying in a bad.

[945] In a bad.

[946] I mean, so nice.

[947] And I'm like, look, I'm not sitting with them and coach if we have the ability to fly like this.

[948] So I understand the conundrum.

[949] And by the way, I think most people would feel like that.

[950] Like maybe if they're just looking from it from a bird's eye view, they'd be like, well, no. Like the right thing to do is to teach them and to fly coach.

[951] But then you have to do that.

[952] And you work really hard.

[953] And I worked my ass off to, yes, to not fight for my seat.

[954] Yeah.

[955] So, okay, so the only equivalent story is when I was a kid, we didn't.

[956] travel much when my dad was alive but when the jeans hit suddenly my mom was like we're spending and it's on.

[957] So we flew to Europe one summer and we flew in the Concord.

[958] Oh my gosh.

[959] And I was horrified because I was like oh my God this is a huge expenditure of money.

[960] It was very uncomfortable for me. Family accountant.

[961] Everything my mom ordered on the plane I thought we had to individually pay for and every little thing I'd be like really?

[962] Okay.

[963] I started a thing then, which I continued really for a good four or five year period when I was a kid, of taking the cutlery from the aircraft.

[964] Sure, sure.

[965] And keeping it.

[966] Yeah.

[967] So that when I had an apartment of my own, I would already have as much cutlery as I needed.

[968] Minature cutlery.

[969] I kid you not.

[970] About when I got my first apartment, I found the box of cutlery that I had been saving.

[971] And I opened it up.

[972] And of course, I hadn't realized that what looks like normal cutlery when you're a kid is actually little tiny airplane cutler.

[973] It's like the booze bottles.

[974] It's like the booze bottles.

[975] Exactly.

[976] So I was like, oh, shit, I can't use this.

[977] I've been thinking all my life, this is one thing I'm not going to have to pay for.

[978] You're going to have to either start hosting like children's dinner parties or get some new coloring.

[979] So I guess this all leads me to a question then, Anderson, because I bet I feel like many people like, I want to rescue you from you.

[980] Do you feel that way, Monica?

[981] Like, to see the little boy panicked on the Concord and not a lot.

[982] able to enjoy flying supersonically.

[983] I want to grab that little kid and go, hey, you're off the clock now, man. Let's just be a boy and let's have some fun and check out the fact that we're...

[984] But he may not become who he is.

[985] Oh, he wanted.

[986] He wanted.

[987] But it does lead me, do you have a sweet spot?

[988] Is there an activity you do or a hobby you do where you're not fucking taking in all the info that could ultimately capsize this experience?

[989] Do you have a safe space?

[990] My son has become that in a way I never even imagined and it's very rare that I can be in a room for several hours just in the room present and I've done meditation retreats and I'm a big believer in mindfulness meditation and stuff but just being with this little creature running around is the greatest thing ever and also I mean he looks like me he looks like so much like my brother and like my mom it connects me to my little nuclear family I had growing up, none of whom are here anymore.

[991] And it makes me think about my dad and me as my dad and the parent.

[992] It's just fascinating on so many different levels and so healing and just, yeah, it makes everything else seem just so ridiculous and like, why am I wasting time obsessing about these things or doing these things?

[993] We can call it obsessive thinking, but it is also narcissism to some degree, for me at least.

[994] I'm evaluating every, nanosecond of the day, what could make me feel more comfortable or less afraid or more secure or this or that or more my ego, whatever it is, to finally fucking have two things that I think about more than myself, or at least when I'm around them, I can think about them.

[995] The freedom of stepping out of this fucking hamster wheel has been life -changing for me. And it's just the most glorious thing.

[996] And I'll add one more thing to it.

[997] You're a guy that has had to, whether you wanted to are not, think about your identity as Anderson Cooper, the journalist, because you get ratings, you have contract extensions.

[998] You couldn't be the business you are and not be aware of that.

[999] And for me to finally have a thing, an identity cornerstone, that was unrelated to all that, which is like, I'm their dad number fucking one of all things.

[1000] That to me was just the biggest gift of all.

[1001] I completely feel that.

[1002] And I've thought about and worked on all of this stuff for, you know, obviously years and years and years, and the fact that I've been able to last this long has been a testament to, like, getting really good advice from a variety of smart therapists over the years who have saved my life and enabled me to help me have a life.

[1003] But, yeah, it has become the greatest thing ever, and it's become all I really care about.

[1004] And, like, all my thoughts are no longer about, oh, 15 years, what am I going to look like and if I'm not if I don't find somebody soon I'm not gonna now I'm not gonna see anybody and you know like it doesn't none of that really matters as much anymore and everything about this little creature is just incredible you know I have this fantasy of sort of taking my son out on if I'm still going out on stories and going around the world bringing him along with me on some things and just kind of exposing him to for me leaving high school early and riding across substar in Africa in a truck for six months, it just reframes your entire way of thinking about things.

[1005] And I think I want to try to expose him to as many of those kind of experiences early on.

[1006] Yeah.

[1007] And for me, also grew up where a lot of famous people were in my house as a kid, and both my parents had me at the table sitting next to Charlie Chaplin when he first came back to America to receive his special Oscar.

[1008] I was, I greeted him at the door and was expected to make conversation with him and experiences like that, you get a sense of the value that your parents have in you that they think you're as interesting as everyone else and that other people will find you interesting.

[1009] But you also, to me, one of the greatest privileges early on is to see how messed up everyone else is.

[1010] And to see that just because somebody's an adult, it doesn't mean that they have their shit together and that, in fact, the more money they have, that's not really the solution either because all these people who I met, who I knew had a lot of money were just as messed up as anybody, if not more so.

[1011] So, yeah, I hope to at least expose him to opportunities.

[1012] And that's really with the book, the way I went about writing it is, this is not some kind of, oh, those saucy Vanderbiltz and that, oh, what a glorious time it was.

[1013] It's much more the stripping away the facade of the palaces and the fancy dresses and the balls and kind of seeing the lives of isolation and sadness that many of them were trapped in.

[1014] By the way, I think it's a relevant endeavor because you really start looking at, as you said, like we coveted having this aristocratic class.

[1015] We coveted having nobility, even though we didn't have it in America.

[1016] It's funny, that stuff was correlating with us hosting world fairs, saying like, look at us.

[1017] We too are this thing.

[1018] And every little cog in it, is part of the story that perpetuates it.

[1019] So if people don't buy into the fantasy that becoming Cornelius Vanderbilt isn't the be all end all, then does the whole system collapse?

[1020] I think that's the fear.

[1021] Like so there's so many actors that are incentivized to keep up this total bullshit fairy tale.

[1022] I asked, we got to interview Prince Harry, and I was like, how fucked up is it to be reading these storybooks as a kid?

[1023] Every storybook is, if everything goes perfectly, they'll end up being you.

[1024] And you're like, this isn't that great.

[1025] And he's like, yeah, it's fucking weird.

[1026] So I think the more we deconstruct the story, I think that healthier people can feel and I have the same concern you do, which is like to talk about money in a way that's not like, I'm so fucking lucky to have it feels dangerous.

[1027] But at the same time, it's like, I feel like it's my duty to go like, it's great.

[1028] If you have health care for your kids, that part's fucking awesome.

[1029] Yes, there are a lot of great stuff.

[1030] But also on the other side, married to Kristen, it would appear we have a perfect fucking star cross thing.

[1031] No, we're constantly in a couple therapy we tell everyone like i think it's our duty to go like decide what fantasy you want because the fantasy to have is meaningfulness if you can find a way to have meaning in your life that is the fairy tale that gives i think yeah i just forced you to co -sign on my own soapbox with your book no but i think that's true i mean my mom had this great sense of my mom grew up i call her in the book the last vanderbilt because she really was the you know the last vanderbilt whose birth made headlines and front pages of papers and whose death did as well and who lived her entire life in the public eye and the last one who had been alive who was born into that world which really does not exist anymore and yet she wasn't really of that time either she always talked about feeling like a stranger in the Vanderbilt family the first 10 years in her life she was raised by her socialite mom who was off with her in hotel rooms in France and she had a nurse and her grandmother who she loved but she didn't know who the Vanderbilt where she was forcibly sent to live with them by the courts in New York when her mother was proved to be unfit or shown to be unfit.

[1032] But even when she lived with Gertrude Vanderbilt -Wittany, her aunt, she didn't feel a part of that, just as I didn't feel a part of that.

[1033] And I think that allowed my mom to kind of develop this own sense of herself and this own sense of meaning and this own sense of what was important to her.

[1034] And early on, she saw the results of money around her.

[1035] She saw all the machinations that were involved in having her taken away from her mother.

[1036] And she developed kind of this rock hard diamond inside of her that she felt nothing could get at and nothing could scratch.

[1037] And she spent all her life kind of propelling herself forward through lots of traumas and lots of sadness and lots of pain from the past because she wanted to be seen and heard and felt and make something of her own life.

[1038] And I think that drive is a really important thing.

[1039] I think it can be a harmful thing because it can make you never content, but I think it's important.

[1040] I hope my child has some sort of a drive because I think that that drive will get one through.

[1041] Yeah, I agree.

[1042] And just to hear that story about your mom and go like, okay, yeah, so we're using the word privilege for her, certainly financially, but everything beyond that is just fucking straight trauma, the fact that you would be raised by someone other than your mother while your mother did God knows what in a hotel room.

[1043] then you would be taken away from her, then you'd live with fucking strangers.

[1044] Like, that's privilege.

[1045] Yeah.

[1046] You know, and same with Prince Harry.

[1047] It's like, yeah, privilege, privilege, privilege.

[1048] And also a fucking animal in a cage at a zoo.

[1049] Yeah.

[1050] Yeah, I mean, when you think about Prince Howard, I mean, I remember it was one of, when I first got at ABC News, I've been doing all the stuff by myself overseas in war zones and stuff, and they didn't know what to do with me. And anyway, I went to cover, be part of ABC's coverage of the funeral of Princess Diana.

[1051] And I just remember, I was outside.

[1052] I decided just doing it with my own little home video camera, kind of just shooting my own story.

[1053] But I remember watching him pass by in that funeral procession.

[1054] And, I mean, I was, I don't know, I was 26 or seven at the time.

[1055] And I just remember thinking, this is friggin criminal.

[1056] Like, letting this child walk behind his mom's, I mean, I know visually it looks stunning and it's very, like, British, but, I mean, this is, is no one around here thinking, like, this is horrific.

[1057] It was insane.

[1058] Yeah.

[1059] Well, it's good to end on a positive note like that.

[1060] Well, you know what, Anderson, besides you telling me that, no, in fact, we haven't met and me now understanding that, the real piece of the puzzle for me now is like, I thousand percent would remember meeting you because I fucking love talking to you sincerely.

[1061] And I hope I get to do it a bunch more times in the future because I would remember this, this rhythm.

[1062] So I thank you.

[1063] I've also been checking out your tats because I'm obsessed with tattoos and been wanting to get a tattoo for a good 40 years now.

[1064] I actually found pictures my dad took in me when I was like nine that he had drawn all these tattoos on my arms because I really wanted tattoos even back then.

[1065] And I have on my Instagram, I have an entire file of just every tattoo I like, artists I like.

[1066] It's endlessly, this is one of the things I ruminate on.

[1067] You should get one of the drawings.

[1068] your dad drew if you have a picture i thought oh i've thought about that yes yeah i've thought that yeah you'll probably end up just littering up your whole body with things for your son because that seems to be what i'm doing i can tell you one thing about tattoos that makes sense i tried to tell monica this as well i'm sure there's a voice in your head that's like oh my god but it's permanent it's permanent i'm gonna like i'm making a decision i'm going to have look at it well i regret it but i promise you this they're completely invisible to you after like three months of having them you will never ever think of it again.

[1069] I can promise you.

[1070] And anyone that's got tattoos will tell you the same thing.

[1071] It's like, right now I'm absurdly aware of these two, because I'm like, Jesus Christ, they're everywhere I look.

[1072] And that'll go away in three weeks.

[1073] I'll forget I have them.

[1074] Yeah.

[1075] So there's really no downside.

[1076] Right.

[1077] All right, Anderson, V. Cooper.

[1078] It's been a fucking blast.

[1079] And good luck with the book.

[1080] Vanderbilt, rise and fall of an American dynasty, Vanderbilt.

[1081] I cannot wait to read it.

[1082] I'm telling you, because I fucking love the Vanderbilt story.

[1083] Yeah.

[1084] I hope you like it.

[1085] I will.

[1086] All right.

[1087] Be well.

[1088] Thank you.

[1089] Cool.

[1090] Thanks.

[1091] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1092] It's counting.

[1093] Oh, my God, the numbers are counting?

[1094] I was a little scared they weren't going to count.

[1095] I understand.

[1096] It took a long time for that thing to boot up.

[1097] It did.

[1098] And you just never know.

[1099] We can't get too...

[1100] Confident.

[1101] Too egotistical.

[1102] Well, sure.

[1103] Slash confident in our equipment.

[1104] Yeah.

[1105] You got to have some humility.

[1106] Exactly.

[1107] It's going to break.

[1108] Do you want me to play the couple of clips I recorded?

[1109] Because it occurred to me like, wow, if this is for the rest of my life, I should start recording that.

[1110] Yeah, let's hear it.

[1111] Okay, okay.

[1112] Hold on.

[1113] Oh, no. How's it going?

[1114] It's still funny.

[1115] Relatively funny, though.

[1116] Can you hear it?

[1117] I came across some hiccups about, I got.

[1118] Yes.

[1119] Okay.

[1120] Yeah, we're going on 22 hours of it.

[1121] No, 21.

[1122] I got it at 9 o 'clock last night.

[1123] That's the time the hiccups started.

[1124] And they ran from 9 p .m. until all the way in the morning.

[1125] Right on, you heard it all night long?

[1126] All night long.

[1127] And they went away for stretches today.

[1128] A couple hours in the afternoon.

[1129] That was a lot of hiccups.

[1130] I think you're right.

[1131] You can't hear them as well.

[1132] So you've had a rough couple of days.

[1133] I got hiccups Friday night at 9 p .m. And they just went away this morning Monday.

[1134] Oof.

[1135] And we don't know that they're gone for good.

[1136] We're not sure that they're gone for good.

[1137] But you've gone, this is the longest you've gone.

[1138] For sure.

[1139] For sure.

[1140] Yeah.

[1141] I, um, up to the medicine game last night and got some nexium or some shit that Richard told me to get, yeah, Eric.

[1142] Oh, wee.

[1143] Anyway, it was a very weird weekend to be.

[1144] struggling with hiccups for 48 hours because you can't really enjoy yourself.

[1145] If you start moving around, you know, you get the hiccup and then it turns violent.

[1146] Like you're going to, you know, let it rip.

[1147] And I did let it rip a ton.

[1148] Oh, man. Weird, weird.

[1149] First time of my life, 46 years.

[1150] I'm really curious.

[1151] I mean, I think it's probably acid reflux.

[1152] Yeah.

[1153] Would be my guess.

[1154] That's a good guess.

[1155] The look on your face is so funny right now.

[1156] I'm scared.

[1157] What do you think is going to happen?

[1158] I don't know.

[1159] I'm sad.

[1160] I'm sorry.

[1161] I mean, don't be sorry.

[1162] I'm sorry.

[1163] I've picked up these sickups.

[1164] But I think they're gone.

[1165] They're gone.

[1166] It is crazy that when you look it up online, it'll say, not to worry until it goes past 48 hours.

[1167] It was like 52 hours.

[1168] Like, it's crazy they know the body.

[1169] Like, everyone just give the body a couple days to adjust.

[1170] To figure itself out.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] I guess it falls in that, like, missing.

[1173] person's thing too.

[1174] They don't want you to come in if the person's been gone six hours.

[1175] They want you to give it like 48 hours.

[1176] I know.

[1177] But if you're the person who's missing someone for six out, like you can't.

[1178] I know.

[1179] In 36 hours missing someone?

[1180] That's a tremendous amount of yeah.

[1181] Waiting the extra 12 sounds really gruesome.

[1182] Well, you got nervous.

[1183] You wouldn't be able to do a podcasting anymore.

[1184] Oh my God.

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] And I started to think like, oh my God, this whole thing psychological.

[1187] Like I was trying to wonder had I gone to the emergency room, say on Saturday night and was like, I just can't handle it.

[1188] I'm throwing up every five minutes and I have these hiccups.

[1189] And I was like, would they give me Xanax?

[1190] Like, is something, is this something?

[1191] Anxiety.

[1192] Yeah, is this like anxiety related?

[1193] Is it a panic attack of sorts?

[1194] Yeah, something neurological.

[1195] Yeah.

[1196] It could be.

[1197] So then I was thinking, what am I stressed about?

[1198] And then I was like, oh my God, I'm like manifesting that I can't do this thing I love because I think I don't deserve it.

[1199] Oh, no. Well, why else would I think that?

[1200] Like, why do we think always it's all going to get.

[1201] It snatched from us.

[1202] Because we don't deserve it, right?

[1203] That's got to be at the core of it.

[1204] Like, I don't deserve this.

[1205] Well, it's not, I don't know if it's, I don't deserve it, but it's, this is way too good to be true.

[1206] Right.

[1207] The same thing.

[1208] I guess.

[1209] I mean.

[1210] If you get down to the personal, like emotional thing that's happening, it has to be I don't deserve this.

[1211] Yeah, maybe.

[1212] You do deserve it.

[1213] I don't know if I do, but regardless, what I certainly don't want.

[1214] to happen is render myself unable to interview people because I'm fucking hiccuping and puking.

[1215] What if I have a little puke bucket next to the...

[1216] Oh, my God.

[1217] We can't do any in person anymore if I have a little...

[1218] It's like something I just got to work through.

[1219] Oh, my gosh.

[1220] But can't you see the mind having the power to do that to itself?

[1221] Yeah, absolutely.

[1222] Just ruin this wonderful thing because I don't think I deserve it.

[1223] It's funny because I think you deserve it.

[1224] There's one thing I deserve it.

[1225] No, you deserve it.

[1226] If I were the listener, I'd be like, well, what kicked this off?

[1227] Great question.

[1228] Great.

[1229] A box of chocolates.

[1230] I mean, that was the last thing I ate before all hell broke loose.

[1231] Someone, per the holidays, brought over a nice sampling of different chocolates with caramel in it, nuts, and I got carried away.

[1232] And I had too many of them.

[1233] And I didn't feel great afterwards.

[1234] And then the hiccuping started.

[1235] Yeah.

[1236] And then it ran until today.

[1237] It might just be as simple as that.

[1238] I don't do well with sugar.

[1239] Yeah.

[1240] No one really does.

[1241] It's not good for us.

[1242] But as I've gotten older, I really like, it makes my stomach foul pretty quick.

[1243] So hopefully that's the lesson.

[1244] Just no more sugar.

[1245] Yeah.

[1246] And about Oreos.

[1247] Hmm.

[1248] Those don't have sugar.

[1249] Okay.

[1250] Okay.

[1251] I had three Oreos.

[1252] At my worst point, I had eaten in like 18 hours.

[1253] And I was dying and I just let two dissolve in my mouth.

[1254] Because I had convinced myself it was like a protein shake.

[1255] Like as long as there's no hard food in there, the hiccups won't be bothered.

[1256] The things I convinced myself.

[1257] of in the minute of desperation are preposterous, but I kept doing it.

[1258] And then the mints, I had to lay off the mints for a full 30 hours.

[1259] What about the toothpicks?

[1260] Those two, I find that it escalated the burping.

[1261] Shit.

[1262] Yeah.

[1263] So then I was like, oh, fuck, well, I got these horrendous things.

[1264] And there's no way I'm quitting nicotine on this day that I already feel horrendous, right?

[1265] So I had to go to Lincoln and go, I have to go buy chewing tobacco.

[1266] I'm really sorry.

[1267] But I got to do it.

[1268] Yeah.

[1269] She was like, oh, okay.

[1270] You think the nicotine in the dip is not going to exacerbate it.

[1271] Well, the nicotine and dip gets absorbed through your gums, so it doesn't go to your stomach.

[1272] Whereas the mince dissolve in your mouth and you swallow them, and then the nicotine enters through your stomach.

[1273] So, I mean, it made some sense.

[1274] It makes a little sense.

[1275] I don't know.

[1276] It does.

[1277] It does actually make sense, yeah.

[1278] But some of it probably still gets down your throat.

[1279] I make a real effort to not let that happen because I don't want that anyways.

[1280] Yeah, because throw cancer.

[1281] Throw cancer.

[1282] Yeah.

[1283] Well, just and gross.

[1284] And gross.

[1285] And gross.

[1286] Sure, sure, all of it.

[1287] People who have known who dip and they call it gutting it, do you know this?

[1288] No. I've told you.

[1289] They swallow it.

[1290] They swallow it.

[1291] And that's called gutting it.

[1292] They don't spit.

[1293] That is.

[1294] And I've told you.

[1295] Yeah.

[1296] It can lead to halitosis.

[1297] Yep.

[1298] And I can't have that.

[1299] You cannot.

[1300] No. That would be a deal breaker.

[1301] For podcasting.

[1302] Well, we need your breath to smell the.

[1303] Shit.

[1304] Well, okay.

[1305] I guess we're just back to Zoom.

[1306] But also, you couldn't handle it.

[1307] You couldn't sit next to me if I had a rank breath.

[1308] No, you and I are pretty intolerant of.

[1309] I'm really intolerant of.

[1310] Let me speak for myself.

[1311] No, I am.

[1312] I am.

[1313] And I feel bad because I know like.

[1314] No one's picking out bad breath.

[1315] Exactly.

[1316] And I don't think it's necessarily because they're not brushing their teeth.

[1317] It's not negligence.

[1318] Yeah.

[1319] It's like biochemical.

[1320] Well, I had a friend.

[1321] He has since passed.

[1322] Okay.

[1323] And he sued me. and he overdosed.

[1324] And I love them.

[1325] Okay.

[1326] It was complicated.

[1327] Layered.

[1328] It's really layered.

[1329] But we would go to the movies a lot together.

[1330] That was our favorite thing to do.

[1331] And we'd be sitting close enough that I could smell his breath in the movies.

[1332] And then once I can smell breath.

[1333] I know.

[1334] It's the end.

[1335] It's literally, it's all consuming for me. I just smelled my breath.

[1336] How's it doing?

[1337] I think it's okay.

[1338] Smell like chili?

[1339] Yeah, I just had a nice bit of bison chili.

[1340] But see, the people who have bad breath in this way, halitosis, I guess.

[1341] Yeah, chronic bad breath.

[1342] Sometimes it's not all the way halitosis, I don't know.

[1343] That's true.

[1344] It's not relevant what they ate.

[1345] I think so.

[1346] You do?

[1347] I do.

[1348] Okay.

[1349] I think like if...

[1350] Like, I don't think my chilly breath smells like halitosis breath.

[1351] Oh, no, no. It smells like food, for sure.

[1352] Right.

[1353] Yeah, that's a good point.

[1354] I do think, though, that you could have a really crappy diet in your stomach could be, emitting fumes from...

[1355] Yes.

[1356] Way past when it would smell like food.

[1357] But you're right.

[1358] It's not bad if someone's breast smells like cheese pizza.

[1359] Right.

[1360] It's if it smells like they hadn't brushed.

[1361] Jess calls it ginger.

[1362] Oh, ginger.

[1363] For gingivitis.

[1364] He says like, oh, that person has ginger.

[1365] Yeah.

[1366] Uh -huh.

[1367] Oh, I like that.

[1368] It's cute.

[1369] He makes things cute.

[1370] The other day he said, oh, I'm cuts rolling.

[1371] And I was like, what's that?

[1372] He said in high school, like, because he would eat so fast, ding, ding, ding.

[1373] Oh, my gosh.

[1374] Oh, my, by the way, hiccups.

[1375] Yes.

[1376] I didn't really want to out him, but Jess has had many bouts of this, what you've experienced over the past two days.

[1377] He's an expert.

[1378] Yes.

[1379] So what's interesting is there was a moment in this dark weekend where I remembered that I was quite mean to Jess about his hiccups.

[1380] But I'm about to start defending myself before even all.

[1381] my guilt about.

[1382] Yeah, I was really mean to him and intolerant.

[1383] But on like day five of it.

[1384] Yeah.

[1385] And really it was because I had determined as if I was a doctor what the cause of his hiccups were, which was drinking.

[1386] Yeah.

[1387] And so I don't really have much sympathy for that.

[1388] Yeah.

[1389] But yeah, and I ate a bunch of sugar.

[1390] I guess I don't know why it's much.

[1391] Well, we don't know if that's why.

[1392] What's that?

[1393] Mine?

[1394] The sugar, yeah.

[1395] Oh, you're right.

[1396] Regardless, I felt like I could have been kinder to him.

[1397] Although I also needed them to stop.

[1398] God, see, I'm right back to where I started.

[1399] I guess I don't feel that bad.

[1400] I guess I feel like it's different enough.

[1401] But what I felt like is I know how miserable I felt the last 24, whatever, 72 hours.

[1402] And I was just trying to keep a good attitude for everyone because, you know, I hate being a drag.

[1403] And I felt like he probably needed some love in those situations when he had massive hiccups.

[1404] I feel like the boys were intolerant.

[1405] Yeah, yeah.

[1406] And I, what was happening with me is, again, kind of like what's happening right now, fear.

[1407] Like, I have like this, I just feel very uncomfortable.

[1408] Someone's going to die.

[1409] Yeah.

[1410] Yeah, you always go right to someone's going to die.

[1411] Or not even that, but just like that person's in pain.

[1412] You know, I don't like it.

[1413] So just triggered that a little bit, too, of like, like, this is hard to be around because it's making me scared.

[1414] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1415] But Cuts Rowland.

[1416] Cuts Rowland is someone he made in high school.

[1417] Okay.

[1418] He would eat too much and cut his whole mouth up.

[1419] Oh, from the, okay.

[1420] Yep.

[1421] And then he would call himself Cuts Roland.

[1422] And he had done it again?

[1423] Yeah, I mean, he didn't do that from food, but he had like a cut in his mouth or something.

[1424] And he was just like, oh, I'm Cuts Roland.

[1425] Oh.

[1426] Oh, he's a funny boy.

[1427] How was your weekend?

[1428] My weekend was Christmassy.

[1429] Okay.

[1430] My tree is beautiful.

[1431] It really is.

[1432] We're in your apartment because they're chiseling out the back of the pool.

[1433] It's loud.

[1434] For the third time.

[1435] This is the third time.

[1436] They're out there with chisels breaking it all apart.

[1437] Oh, my God.

[1438] I mean, these poor guys.

[1439] I can't imagine showing up for a job you've already done three times and getting started.

[1440] It must be so overwhelming.

[1441] It's like, oh, my God.

[1442] This is never going to get done.

[1443] At some point, you would just think, we can't do this for some reason.

[1444] Mm -hmm.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] We don't know why.

[1447] It's worked everywhere else, but it's not going to work here.

[1448] It's not working here.

[1449] Yeah.

[1450] So I feel bad for them.

[1451] But anyways, so much chiseling.

[1452] Anyways, we're at your apartment, and your Christmas tree is glorious.

[1453] It's a real tree.

[1454] It smells wonderful.

[1455] I love it.

[1456] It's really pretty.

[1457] The whole apartment's got a really nice Christmas vibe.

[1458] Thanks.

[1459] Got a six and a half foot tall candle on top of your dresser.

[1460] That's a ding, ding, ding, ding, kind of.

[1461] Kind of.

[1462] Well, Anderson Cooper is also cute boy.

[1463] Oh, big time.

[1464] So we can tie him into cute boy group.

[1465] Yeah, for sure.

[1466] Cute Boy Day was Bradley.

[1467] Oh, Bradley.

[1468] That people figured that part out.

[1469] Yep, it was Bradley and then someone else we have not released yet.

[1470] But we're going to add Anderson into cute boy group.

[1471] Oh, okay, I think so.

[1472] Mainly for the ding, ding, ding.

[1473] Okay.

[1474] So my hugely large candle.

[1475] Is inspired by cute boy number one.

[1476] Yes, because he owns these candles.

[1477] He had them in his apartment.

[1478] Cooper.

[1479] Uh -huh.

[1480] They made the whole apartment smell so good.

[1481] Oh.

[1482] Loved it.

[1483] Oh.

[1484] And you got one now.

[1485] But mine's huge.

[1486] He doesn't have one this big.

[1487] Yeah, I would remember it, I think.

[1488] It looks like a bathroom trash can.

[1489] It really does.

[1490] Yeah, that's exactly the size.

[1491] If you have a trash can in your.

[1492] bathroom.

[1493] And a good size bathroom trash man. Yeah, a good size waist basket.

[1494] Yeah.

[1495] It has like eight wicks.

[1496] I mean, it's huge.

[1497] It's huge.

[1498] I didn't know that when I got it.

[1499] I thought I was getting like a big candle, but not like half of that size.

[1500] That's kind of great though.

[1501] Generally when you order something and it shows up, it's smaller than you're right.

[1502] You're right.

[1503] Which sucks.

[1504] And this is twice the size of what you thought existed.

[1505] It's going to last a lifetime except I've been burning it a fair amount to make my apartment smell good.

[1506] And then yesterday, I went to order another one for a friend.

[1507] Yeah.

[1508] And they don't ship to the U .S. all of a sudden.

[1509] That is so weird.

[1510] I know.

[1511] You got yours, what, a week ago?

[1512] No, like, right when we got back.

[1513] Oh, okay, from Paris.

[1514] Yeah.

[1515] So they don't ship to the U .S. anymore.

[1516] And so now this is so limited a dish.

[1517] I can't burn it anymore.

[1518] Oh, it's a collector's item now.

[1519] It's worth so much.

[1520] Oh, my God.

[1521] It's like Jordan's.

[1522] Can't wear them.

[1523] Exactly.

[1524] Anyway, cute boys.

[1525] Cute boys.

[1526] Anderson Cooper.

[1527] Oh, my God.

[1528] That's a ding, ding, ding.

[1529] That was like, Big time.

[1530] That was sitting there.

[1531] Bradley Cooper, Anderson Lee Cooper.

[1532] Okay, well, let me look into some facts.

[1533] Also, this is the last fact check of the year.

[1534] Good year?

[1535] Great year.

[1536] Yeah.

[1537] Look, I mean, for the show?

[1538] Yeah, great year.

[1539] Oh, my God.

[1540] Incredible year.

[1541] Okay.

[1542] Who owns the Biltmore, estate currently.

[1543] You haven't been there, right?

[1544] I have.

[1545] You have been.

[1546] My mom loves telling the story that we were on the tour of the place and we had walked by a room and they told us the acoustics were so good at this dinner table that was like 40 feet long that you could whisper on one end and hear it on the other.

[1547] But there are ropes up so you couldn't go in there.

[1548] Oh.

[1549] And so we were on the tour and my mom all of a sudden realized she didn't know where I was at and then she heard an alarm going off and then she went in there and I was at that table trying to test out the acoustics.

[1550] Of course you were.

[1551] Yeah, yeah.

[1552] Oh, wow.

[1553] People never change.

[1554] Okay, today the company is still run by descendants of George Vanderbilt.

[1555] The president and CEO is currently Bill Cecil Jr. The company employs over 2 ,400 people who maintain that 8 ,000 acres of the Biltmore Estate Hotel Winery Restaurant and Shop.

[1556] It's a hotel now?

[1557] Maybe there's also a hotel next to it or something.

[1558] Oh, my gosh.

[1559] I want to do it.

[1560] Well, it's so beautiful.

[1561] It's crazy.

[1562] It's crazy.

[1563] crazy.

[1564] Oh, I know.

[1565] I've been.

[1566] You've been to?

[1567] Oh.

[1568] It's incredible.

[1569] But the Grove Park Inn is right there.

[1570] Tell me about the Grove Park Inn.

[1571] Oh, my God.

[1572] You don't know about Grove Park Inn?

[1573] No, in Asheville, North Carolina.

[1574] Yeah, it's the best.

[1575] It's the best.

[1576] It's a hotel in Asheville.

[1577] I didn't know we've both been to this place.

[1578] Yeah.

[1579] Oh, my gosh.

[1580] I went when I was little with my mom and dad.

[1581] They took me there.

[1582] Neil wasn't on the scene yet?

[1583] Great question.

[1584] I don't remember him.

[1585] Okay.

[1586] Okay.

[1587] So if he was, he was little.

[1588] Like, it must have been like 10 or 11.

[1589] Okay.

[1590] Or eight before he was born.

[1591] Eight or 11.

[1592] Yeah.

[1593] And the Grove Park Inn is this gorgeous hotel in Asheville.

[1594] And you go in and there's like fireplaces and all this seating.

[1595] It's very cozy.

[1596] It's huge.

[1597] Oh.

[1598] Hot tub and swimming pool?

[1599] Oh, I'm sure.

[1600] It's a must.

[1601] Come on.

[1602] And it's supposed to go at Christmas.

[1603] So actually, I've been twice.

[1604] I went to Asheville also when I was a grown -up lady with a friend.

[1605] I met her there, my friend Kim.

[1606] You did?

[1607] Uh -huh.

[1608] When was this?

[1609] Maybe like five years ago?

[1610] Up until this very story, I would have guessed I knew 70 % of your life.

[1611] And now I'm fearful.

[1612] I only know 50.

[1613] I didn't know you're a regular visitor of Asheville, North Carolina, which is, as you know, my, like, fourth favorite town.

[1614] You love it.

[1615] I know.

[1616] I've only been twice so I can't claim it as, like, mine.

[1617] Okay.

[1618] It was probably like five years ago.

[1619] that I went with Kim and we went at Christmas because Grove Park Inn at Christmas is like way longer than five years ago but continue you didn't do this while I knew you no yeah I did you did yeah yeah because I was at Christmas at my parents house and I left my parents house for like two days drove to Asheville met Kim we stayed at a hotel not the Grove Park in how long is that drive three hours fucking nothing or four you guys should go there all the time from I just don't know.

[1620] Four sounds right.

[1621] I just don't know.

[1622] Oh, no, my nails breaking.

[1623] Oh, I have Christmas nails.

[1624] Yeah, they're incredible.

[1625] Thank you.

[1626] Even though you don't like nails, you can appreciate them.

[1627] Well, I think the paint job is really pretty.

[1628] Shout out to Danny at nail boutique in Studio City because I had an inspiration picture and it was like, oh, no. Like, you know, when I showed it to him, I could tell there was some panic.

[1629] Uh -huh.

[1630] Oh, wow.

[1631] This is really tough.

[1632] This is going to be a lot.

[1633] Yeah.

[1634] And I could feel him like...

[1635] Tensing up a little bit?

[1636] Yeah, like getting scared.

[1637] And I pivoted.

[1638] I was like, well, actually, we can just do the top part.

[1639] And he said, no, no, no, no, we're going to do it like this.

[1640] Oh, my gosh.

[1641] He took the challenge and ran with it.

[1642] Wow.

[1643] And it was a few hours, right?

[1644] Yeah.

[1645] Oh.

[1646] And he did such a good job.

[1647] Yeah, he really did.

[1648] They're incredible.

[1649] And all the other technicians were like walking by and kind of staring.

[1650] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1651] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1652] Yeah, it's cool.

[1653] That's great.

[1654] Anyway, Asheville Grove Park in, Christmas, ding, ding, ding.

[1655] So it's beautiful there, but it's near the Biltmore.

[1656] Right.

[1657] So I don't know what hotel they're talking about.

[1658] Curious.

[1659] 2 ,400 employees seems insane.

[1660] I mean, it's a huge tourist thing.

[1661] But that's too many people.

[1662] 2400?

[1663] I know.

[1664] That's a small town.

[1665] Well, Asheville only has 2 ,500 people.

[1666] Oh, my God.

[1667] God, it's keeping the city alive.

[1668] Only 100 people don't work there.

[1669] Okay, how much do private planes cost to book or own?

[1670] I didn't look this up because I know you know.

[1671] Oh.

[1672] Will you tell us?

[1673] I only know vaguely.

[1674] Oh.

[1675] Well, it's such a huge conversation.

[1676] There is, what is a brand new golf stream, $650, those are like $65 million.

[1677] Oh, my God.

[1678] To own.

[1679] That to own, to buy one.

[1680] Yeah.

[1681] And that one will fly around the world.

[1682] that is a long -range aircraft.

[1683] Wow.

[1684] I want to say the Boeing business jet is probably around $85 or $90 million.

[1685] That's more?

[1686] More than a G650, yeah.

[1687] The Boeing business jet.

[1688] That's like what probably Bill Gates has.

[1689] Oh, my God.

[1690] Like, you know, bedrooms in the back.

[1691] I thought you were starting at the top, but you were starting at the bottom.

[1692] Yes, some people, I want to say Ron Berkel.

[1693] This is all weird stuff to say, but I want to say Ron Berkel.

[1694] has a 747.

[1695] I think a few cats have like 727, 740, like full commercial, yeah, commercial airliners that have been converted.

[1696] Who is Ron Burkle?

[1697] Ron Burkle started Ralph's grocery chain, sold it all for $4 billion or something.

[1698] Oh, my God.

[1699] 18 years ago and he has this investment fund called maybe Sequoia.

[1700] Oh.

[1701] Anywho, I think he has a 747.

[1702] But now let me jump down to the next thing.

[1703] Okay.

[1704] Weirdly, and when I say they're cheap, obviously, they're not cheap.

[1705] But now you can own an 80s G4, which is a big plane.

[1706] You can put like, I don't know, 13 people on it.

[1707] You can buy one of those for about $3 .5 million.

[1708] Oh.

[1709] So you're kind of like, oh, that's not terribly expensive compared to $65 million.

[1710] Right.

[1711] But the problem with these planes isn't at all buying them.

[1712] It's maintaining them.

[1713] They have to be updated.

[1714] Like their avionics have to be updated really regularly.

[1715] And it's millions of dollars.

[1716] Like it's, it's, it's, right.

[1717] You have to get them refurbished all the time with the engines and the avionics.

[1718] And, you know, you've got it in an airplane hanger.

[1719] You got the pilot.

[1720] It's crazy expensive to run, even if you owned it.

[1721] Yeah.

[1722] The dream is you own it and then you're renting it out enough that it ends up paying for your travel.

[1723] But I think that's increasingly hard.

[1724] Wow.

[1725] Now, as far as like chartering, and I could be wrong about this, but I think to charter a flight from like L .A. to New York is 50 ,000 one way.

[1726] Got it.

[1727] I think it's a hundred grand round trip.

[1728] Oh, wow.

[1729] Okay, another cost question.

[1730] Yeah.

[1731] How much does a guide cost at Disneyland?

[1732] Ooh, I don't know because I've never bought one.

[1733] Shit.

[1734] Eric would know.

[1735] Let me text him and see if that was fine.

[1736] Hi.

[1737] Comma.

[1738] Doing a fact check, period.

[1739] How much does a guide at Disneyland cost?

[1740] question mark it's crazy your phone gets that you're basically whispering to it you're like hey I don't want to carry so much guy it knows me um Disneyland is forgot the guide question mark period comma and it came out perfect Eric has notification silence since when well so there's an update now did you get your phone updated mate I don't know you can have this setting that tells people that their thing is on silent, which who gives a fuck?

[1741] Everyone's is on silent.

[1742] I don't need an alert now.

[1743] Oh, it just means it's on silent?

[1744] Yeah.

[1745] Oh, that's silly.

[1746] Which, who's isn't?

[1747] Okay, I didn't know that.

[1748] Yeah.

[1749] That's new with this update that was this weekend.

[1750] Maybe that's what gave me hiccups.

[1751] Because of the change.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] You're not good with change.

[1754] Eric's notifications are silent, so I have to ask Google to.

[1755] Hi.

[1756] comma.

[1757] What does a guide at Disneyland cost?

[1758] Question mark.

[1759] Unbelievable.

[1760] Can you believe we've invented a device that can understand humans?

[1761] I know.

[1762] Like, language is so complicated.

[1763] Guests of Walt Disney World Resort can hire a VIP guide for $350 an hour for a minimum of six hours.

[1764] That means the minimum cost for a VIP guide is 1 ,890, not including the cost of tickets.

[1765] You can, however, bring up to 10 people with one VIP guide.

[1766] Oh, that's interesting.

[1767] 200 to pop.

[1768] Well, but then the tickets are.

[1769] expensive.

[1770] Yeah, they are.

[1771] It's going to be 300 to pop, maybe.

[1772] Or 350.

[1773] Are the tickets over 100?

[1774] Let me look.

[1775] Okay.

[1776] Let me ask Eric.

[1777] Eric, how much is a hot dog at Disneyland and a 30 on string?

[1778] One day Disneyland hopper ticket, ages 10 and over is 159.

[1779] Okay.

[1780] That's the low, that's the cheapest.

[1781] Then it goes up from there.

[1782] You can get a 291, two -day Disneyland hopper ticket.

[1783] Hmm.

[1784] Okay.

[1785] Right.

[1786] Well, now we know.

[1787] So you're going to spend a lot if you want to, a guide.

[1788] But much cheaper than private air travel.

[1789] Exactly.

[1790] I'm sorry to say this, but that's it.

[1791] There was no facts for...

[1792] Well, those were facts.

[1793] Oh, I guess they were.

[1794] Yeah, yeah.

[1795] It was a real delight to talk to him.

[1796] It was an honor.

[1797] Yeah.

[1798] He, he, we've had a rash of guess actually recently that you and I want to take care of afterwards.

[1799] Mm. Yeah, but Anderson is not like, we do.

[1800] We do.

[1801] do want to, but he's so competent.

[1802] Oh, he's way more self -sufficient than we are.

[1803] But I want to help him enjoy everything.

[1804] Yeah.

[1805] You know?

[1806] He seems burdened.

[1807] Yes.

[1808] As he said, he was obsessing about some story coming out.

[1809] They didn't even know what.

[1810] Yeah, he wrote a statement.

[1811] But he wrote a statement for it, even though he didn't know what he was addressing.

[1812] Yeah.

[1813] Well, probably ding, ding, ding, because he doesn't think he deserves it.

[1814] Oh.

[1815] He does.

[1816] He does.

[1817] He's so charismatic.

[1818] So bright.

[1819] Ding, ding, ding, ding, Christmas, bright, cheer.

[1820] Well, Merry Christmas.

[1821] Merry Christmas.

[1822] I hope you have such a good Christmas day.

[1823] You too.

[1824] I hope you give Ashok and Nirmala a big hug for me. I will.

[1825] And give your dad a kiss on the cheek for me and your mama kiss on the lips for me. Okay.

[1826] And then shake Neil's hand for me. Okay.

[1827] I'll be seeing my grandma.

[1828] And say, good job, young man. Oh, okay.

[1829] That's from me. Good job, young man. That's for me. And then tell your grandma, say the time and place.

[1830] That's what I say to her.

[1831] Name the time and place.

[1832] Let's time travel together, baby.

[1833] And then I'll be back in time for our New Year's Eve special.

[1834] Spectacular.

[1835] Our live event at the Willtern in L .A. Yes, live event, Wiltern, L .A., December 31st.

[1836] Come see us.

[1837] Go on their website to get tickets at Arimchairexpertpod .com.

[1838] And we'll see you on New Year's Eve.

[1839] Yeah.

[1840] Oh, my God.

[1841] That's so fun.

[1842] Love you.

[1843] Love you.

[1844] Merry Christmas.

[1845] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1846] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[1847] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.