Podcast Summary:

All There Is with Anderson Cooper
Episode: Sara Bareilles: 'Life's Holiest Lesson'
Date: March 20, 2026
Host: Anderson Cooper
Guest: Sara Bareilles

Episode Overview

This deeply moving episode features Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles in conversation with Anderson Cooper about the universality of grief, the power of storytelling as healing, and how loss has shaped her art—and her life. The discussion centers on connection through vulnerability, with Bareilles sharing grief from recent personal losses, the creative process behind her new song “Home” (premiered here), and how the “All There Is” podcast inspired her to transform pain into music. The episode also explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, loss in community, and the importance of sharing sorrow. Heartfelt song performances and intimate stories make this an episode filled with compassion, honesty, and hope.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Importance of Naming and Sharing Grief

• Sara explains how listening to “All There Is” helped her process her own losses, finding comfort in the honest, persistent naming of grief.

  • “I think it's this very universal experience, but there's nothing as much sort of interrogation, I think, in the common spaces. So it felt really courageous to name it and to keep naming it and to find different ways to turn it over.” – Sara Bareilles [01:11]

• She wrote a song, “Home,” directly inspired by Anderson’s conversation with Stephen Colbert about parental loss.

  • “If we just continue to be brave enough to share the stories that we've lived through, the connection is a part of the medicine.” – Sara Bareilles [02:43]

• Anderson reflects:

  • “I do think it's the only thing that really helps, at least for me...” – Anderson Cooper [03:06]

The Human Need to Be Seen in Grief

• Anderson recounts a profound exchange with an audience member:
  • “You so want people to see you. And it wasn't like you're desperate for attention. It was, you are this little kid. You want people to see you.” – Anderson Cooper [03:54]
  • “In grief, that is particularly true, even if one can't admit that or vocalize that as I could not for my entire life.” – Anderson Cooper [04:02]
• Sara elaborates on the fear of showing true pain, “The fear of being rejected for what is true because it's painful keeps… people just a little bit away from that precipice of actually sharing what's just true.” [04:19]
• Both agree that even saying feelings out loud—to oneself—is daunting.

Grief as a Creative Force

• Sara reveals her upcoming album was largely birthed from pandemic-era grief, following the loss of her friend and manager, Chad Joseph, to cancer in 2020:
  • “This is the first new music that I've written since the pandemic, and...I lost a very dear friend... That was a huge part of what I felt like. I was grieving in 2020.” – Sara Bareilles [05:14]
• The grief of the pandemic’s collective losses also shaped her music:
  • “A huge part of what is moving through us culturally is grief that is just unnamed and unprocessed.” – Sara Bareilles [06:14]

The Universality of Loss & Unmetabolized Grief

• Discussion of society’s collective pandemic grief and isolation:
  • “Unrecognized grief is, to me, at the core of so much of the fracturing of society.” – Anderson Cooper [06:26]
  • “Life becoming unrecognizable and how dysregulating and disorienting that is and how vulnerable we all are.” – Sara Bareilles [06:49]

The Song “Home”: The Healing Power of Storytelling

• Sara debuts “Home,” a song inspired by the Stephen Colbert episode. She calls it, with humor, “pretty much plagiarism” of that conversation. [10:36]
• The song’s major message:
  • “Telling your story, warts and all, is the thing that brings you back home.” – Sara Bareilles [10:45]
• Excerpts from “Home” highlight themes of inherited trauma, naming pain, and finding connection (“life’s holiest lesson…”).
  • “I hadn't yet learned life's holiest lesson—that what is broken cannot heal until it's known and loved by name.” – Sara Bareilles (singing) [12:50]
• Anderson is visibly and audibly moved by the song. Sara responds:
  • “It really unlocked something for me…how much weight it can lift to just let someone hear and see your own...pain. And it's really helpful.” – Sara Bareilles [17:02]

Embracing Both Pain and Connection

• They reflect on the power of shared struggle.
  • “We're actually so universally connected and so similar and so, again, like, not special in our humanness.” – Sara Bareilles [18:43]
  • “Society tells us we should be in corners and in different boxes...yet this is the thing that we all share.” – Anderson Cooper [19:11]
  • “Pain is half of it. Like, pain is the other half of what we do here.” – Sara Bareilles [19:23]
• Referencing Francis Weller, both discuss the importance of drawing grief close.
  • “Companionship with grief...inviting that part of yourself in. Just imagine...if those parts feel held and cared for instead of exiled.” – Sara Bareilles [19:23]

Recent Losses: Remembering Gavin Griel

• Sara talks about losing her friend Gavin Griel, a Broadway actor:
  • “Gavin was 48 and...like a soulmate on some level.” – Sara Bareilles [20:15]
• Describes his presence and the depth of his relationships:
  • “What he left in his wake was just like, an incredible amount of devastation because there was so much love.” – Sara Bareilles [21:50]
• Gavin’s death shifted her priorities:
  • “I feel how important it is to cut the bullshit, like, how unimportant so many things… Just how unimportant all that feels, that quality of connection and relationships are literally the only thing that matter.” – Sara Bareilles [23:08]
• She shares moving memories from Gavin’s memorial and the importance of embracing both darkness and light:
  • “We get to be both darkness and light, despair and hope. We just have to try and be true.” – Sara Bareilles (eulogy) [28:40]

Creative Legacy: Music as Memorial

• Anderson plays a recording of Gavin singing “She Used to Be Mine,” a song Sara wrote. Sara is moved from tears to smiles by the memory.
• She discusses a new song “Salt, Then Sour, Then Sweet,” co-written with Andrea Gibson and Brandi Carlile:
  • “Give me the light years but I want the dark ones too… Grief is the singer in my band...a shortcut straight to the truth...” – Sara Bareilles (singing) [32:26]

Tools and Teachings for Grieving

• Sara discusses her personal mental health journey—including medication, therapy, and meditation—and how it allows her to process grief yet still experience the full range of emotion:

  • “Once I started taking Lexapro, I started feeling myself return to myself. That's what it felt like.” – Sara Bareilles [35:18]

• She embraces pain as a creative force:

  • “I've grown quite fond of [my melancholy]. It's why I write. It's why I make music.” – Sara Bareilles [35:47]

• Her advice for others grieving:

  • “The learning from my grief...is that it's such a beautiful teacher. To draw it close is to draw yourself closer...And the sharing of grief is essential. You actually won't move through it alone. You must find the courage to share it. And I think you'll be surprised how medicinal it is in a really good way.” – Sara Bareilles [36:45]

• On finding people to share with:

  • “Not everybody can go there. And not everybody holds it that well...I would appreciate the trying. Isn't the trying all there is?” – Sara Bareilles [36:56]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What is broken cannot heal until it's known and loved by name.” – Sara Bareilles (from her song “Home”) [12:50]

• “Grief is the singer in my band...and a shortcut straight to the truth.” – Sara Bareilles (“Salt, Then Sour, Then Sweet”) [32:26]

• “We get to be both darkness and light, despair and hope. We just have to try and be true.” – Sara Bareilles (eulogy) [28:40]

• On medication:

  • “I always tell people, you can try it. You can always come back to this. You know what this is. You can do this anytime.” – Sara Bareilles [35:19]

• On the necessity of connection:

  • “I think you'll be surprised how medicinal it is in a really good way.” – Sara Bareilles [36:45]
  • “Isn't the trying all there is?” – Sara Bareilles [36:56]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:01 – 03:31: Bareilles shares how she found the podcast, the power of naming grief, and inspiration for her song “Home.”
• 05:14 – 07:47: Pandemic, personal loss, and the impact on creative work.
• 10:36 – 15:36: Introduction and performance of “Home.”
• 17:02 – 20:01: Reflections on the power of vulnerability and companionship with grief.
• 20:13 – 24:36: Remembering Gavin Griel and reflecting on ‘cutting the bullshit’ after loss.
• 28:40 – 29:51: Sara’s eulogy for Gavin: embracing both light and darkness.
• 31:07 – 33:26: “Salt, Then Sour, Then Sweet” – creative collaboration and the message of the song.
• 33:52 – 35:47: Bareilles discusses antidepressants and their role in her grief journey.
• 36:45 – 37:41: The essential nature of sharing grief and “the trying.”

Conclusion

This episode offers a compassionate exploration of how grief, while deeply painful, becomes bearable—and even transformative—through open sharing, creative expression, and honest connection. Sara Bareilles’s music and words, coupled with Anderson Cooper’s own vulnerability, provide listeners with a sense of community and hope: a reminder that we are not alone in our sorrow, and that the act of sharing our brokenness can bring us home to ourselves and to one another.