Anderson Cooper

And it's a lovely thing.

Yeah.

You were 25 when you learned, really for the first time, that he was not your biological father.

Your dad had told you not to read... The books.

The books that were out there about your mom.

It says a lot about you in that moment of life-changing realization, understandably, anger, confusion, everything, that you would see that in him and realize that

oh, I'm an adult now and I see this and he needs this.

He died in 2006.

He must have been so thrilled to meet your son.

You said, I spent 35 years trying to hide that story to honor my dad.

But something that I've also realized is that sometimes keeping a secret doesn't honor anyone, and it's taken me a long time to figure that out.

There's so many people who have these secrets.

You had all those thoughts?

Disciplined curiosity.

I haven't heard that.

I do think, though, that moment when you can look at your parent or whomever it is with empathy because she... You know, it's so easy to look at things parents do with anger, but when you realize, like...

She didn't know how to be a parent.

She didn't have a parent.

And she's doing really the best she can.

Yeah, my mom, she didn't need my anger.