Nickelodeon recently released an hour-long discussion of issues related to the coronavirus pandemic hosted remotely by Kristen Bell. Between 19, the kids’ outlet produced more than 150 episodes and tackled issues ranging from global warming to hate crimes and sexual harassment. Nickelodeon, now part of ViacomCBS, has won acclaim in the past for “Nick News” broadcasts led by well-regarded anchor Linda Ellerbee. Other media outlets have tried to talk to kid about the news over the years. The new kids’ edition of “Nightly News” is aimed at kids between 6 and 16. Kids represent the next generation of news aficionados, but their ability to navigate their way through troubling headlines, complex stories and the hundreds of bits and pieces of information littered across digital media needs to be honed. In fact, it’s the subject of his moving CNN podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper, which launched in 2022.With the venture, NBC News takes a step on what has often been a tricky path. He doesn’t shy away from discussing grief One way she helped was to encourage me to find books that I was really passionate about.”Ī few of his favorite titles were It Seemed Important at the Time, by his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Families, by his father, Wyatt Cooper.Īs he told O, The Oprah Magazine in 2005, Families felt like “a letter to me from him,” since it focuses on his father’s family in childhood and the one he created as an adult. I had a mild form of dyslexia where I would see some letters backward, and I had to go to a special reading instructor. While sharing some of his favorite books with in 2010, he talked about the influence reading had on him growing up: “As a child, I had a problem reading. Books play a special role in his lifeĬooper has written several books, including the 2017 title The Rainbow Comes and Goes, which he co-authored with his mom. Here’s hoping that their kids also share a strong bond: In a 2020 Father’s Day episode of Watch What Happens Live, Wyatt and Cohen’s son, Benjamin, met for the first time (virtually). He had a close relationship with his mother, Gloria, who was a fashion designer and an artist, before her passing in 2019, and he eulogized her on CNN. He also lost his brother, Carter, to suicide in 1988. His father, screenwriter and author Wyatt Cooper, passed away during a medical procedure when Cooper was just 10. But it had no reality in my life.”ĭespite his famous family connections, Cooper is no stranger to tragedy and hardship. I knew they had all these houses and they were museums now. “The Vanderbilts, when I was a kid, seemed kind of like layabouts. “I felt like no good could come of me paying attention to them,” he told CBS. Treasury.”īut Cooper wasn’t always a fan of his family’s past. And eventually, he formed a railroad company that basically was all rail service on the Eastern seaboard to Chicago.” CBS reports that Cornelius had a $100 million fortune when he died in 1877, and Cooper put this further into perspective: “He had more money than the U.S. And he started buying up small railroads around the Northeast. It was late in life when he decided steamships were the past and railroads were the future. “I actually thought as a kid that everyone’s grandparents turned into a statue when they died.” The Vanderbilt influence is wide-ranging: The university that bears his last name was founded in Nashville in 1873, thanks to $1 million donation, and a scholarship is also named after him.Ĭooper told CBS more about his great-great-great grandfather in 2021: “Well, that’s what’s so crazy, is he built two massive empires. “There were statues of my great-great-great grandfather in New York,” Cooper said in 2006. He’s the son of the late Gloria Vanderbilt, who was an heiress and the great-great-granddaughter Cornelius Vanderbilt, the 19th-century business, railroad, steamship magnate.

His family has famous roots in American historyĪnderson is part of the famed Vanderbilt family.

News anchor with kids in background