-It is nice after the hurricane to see you here dry.
-Yes, I know.
-Not in your iconic black T-shirt.
[ Light laughter ] -I saw your bit.
I know you enjoyed our hurricane coverage.
-I enjoy your hurricane coverage.
I enjoy the Anderson Cooper black T-shirt.
How did you first find your way --
-I was gonna bring out, like,
a little, tiny, baby black T-shirt to give you,
but I couldn´t find one. -[ Laughing ] Yeah.
-There were all being washed by me.
-How do you find your way to a black T-shirt
in the first place? -So, there´s a reason why
you wear a black T-shirt, like, in the field or in a storm,
is because, "A," you´re wet all of the time.
-Yeah.
-And if you´re in a light-colored T-shirt
and you´re dirty,
people are gonna comment on how dirty you are.
-Yeah.
-If you´re sweating and you´re not wet --
you´re just sweating -- then they´ll comment on how sweaty --
and black or dark shirts hide the sweat.
So there´s a reason for it. -Yeah.
But I feel like you´re still the only guy doing it.
-No. Are you -- no. [ Laughter ]
Well, maybe so.
-Well, I feel like other guys, like, wear slickers and coats.
And you will stay in the black T-shirt longer.
-No, that´s not true. I´ll -- I´ll wear a -- I´ll wear a coat.
[ Both laugh ] -Okay.
-But when you´re sopping wet, it doesn´t matter,
like, you´re wet. -Yeah.
-So no matter what you -- you´re wearing a coat,
but, like, the water comes in.
It´s like having people throw buckets of water at you
for 13 hours. -Yeah.
-You´re sopping wet. You might as well, you know...
-Just rock a black T-shirt. [ Light laughter ]
Do we -- We kind of made this point on our show last week.
-Right.
-That we think you guys should all go inside.
-[ Laughing ] Right.
-Can you make the argument for why you have to be out there?
-I mean, look -- first of all,
we all do things which, you know, you -- You´ve what? --
You´ve hosted the CFDA Fashion Awards twice now?
-Yeah. -Is that really necessary?
-It´s -- -Probably not.
-Probably not. -Probably not.
[ Laughter and applause ]
And yet, there you are.
-There I am.
-By the way, I hosted it once, so...
-Yeah. So you really know the second one´s the dumb one.
Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-But, look, I just think it´s a --
it´s an incredible force of nature.
And, you know, we want to document what is happening,
and to see that up close is -- is a really extraordinary thing.
-The only thing -- the only argument I´ll make,
is I feel like part of it is you guys tell people to stay inside.
-Right, and yet, we are outside. -Well, also, if I´m inside,
and I know black T-shirt Anderson Cooper is outside...
-[ Chuckles ] You´re gonna go outside.
-I´m gonna go out and try to meet you.
-When it really gets bad, people do not go outside, thankfully.
-Yeah, that´s good. -But the funny thing is --
I was -- I was, you know, I was there for days.
And I´m literally --
You´re literally on air for, you know, 10 hours at a time.
And it´s wind, and it´s rain --
I mean, that´s what it boils down to.
And so by hour nine, you´re like,
"Remember six hours ago
when I said it was windy and rainy?
Well now it´s really, really windy."
[ Laughter ] "And it´s rainy, too."
But the only thing is,
my mom kept e-mailing me while I was on the air
because -- -So your mom --
Gloria Vanderbilt. -Yes.
-A very famous designer and actress and model.
-Yes, yes.
She is now 93, and I just got her to join Instagram.
-Uh-huh. -And she has now become obsessed
with Instagram and with her Instagram account
to the -- first of all,
my mom didn´t understand what Instagram was.
And it took many times for me to try to explain it.
She still didn´t quite get it.
But -- But then, I made her an account,
because I thought she might get a kick out of it,
and I promoted it on my Instagram account.
And she went from zero to like 130,000 followers very quickly.
And I happened to be with her as the count started going up.
It was like Christmas times 1,000 for her.
She was like, "This is the most incredible thing."
She had -- The idea that
anybody would be interested in what she was doing thrilled her.
She had no idea. -Instant addiction, then.
-Instant addiction. -Yeah.
-To the point now she e-mail -- my mom never e-mailed me before.
She never called me for most of my life.
[ Laughter ]
She now e-mails me about 20 times a day,
and 10 of them are, "Should I post this picture?"
[ Laughter ]
And what´s annoying is, when she e-mails,
she doesn´t believe, when she hits "Send"
that the e-mail necessarily goes out.
So she´ll send three copies of the same e-mail.
[ Laughter ] So I --
And then -- then, an hour later,
it´s, "Maybe it should be this picture."
And then I´ll finally say, "Why don´t you do this picture?"
I´ve limited her.
I´d say, "Look, no more than two a day.
You don´t want to be one of those, you know,
people who needs an Instagram intervention."
And then she´ll e-mail me, "What should I say about the picture?"
I´m like, "You know what? I got a job to do."
[ Laughter ] I -- This -- I´ve --
-Does she have any appreciation or sense
that you are in the middle of a hurricane?
-No, no. -Yeah.
-She´ll be like -- no, she really, really doesn´t.
Like, in fact, I e-mailed her one time -- I e-mailed her back.
I was like, "You know, actually, I´m -- I´m on the air.
I´m in Fort Myers. You know, the storm is coming.
And I´ve been on for nine hours."
No recognition of it. -[ Laughs ]
-She´d just send another one like, "Oh, sorry.
Well, let me just quickly ask you, what about this picture?"
[ Laughter ] So...
-Well, you opened Pandora´s box there
by teaching your mom to Instagram.
-I did, I did. Yes, yeah. -That´s all on you.