(Photo: Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan)

Is Anderson Cooper too brave? His boss, CNN president Jonathan Klein, thinks so. “My main concern at this point is no longer whether he can deliver journalistically,” Klein said at a screening of Planet in Peril, an environmental documentary in which Cooper gamely camps out in Greenland’s ice fields and Brazilian jungle for weeks at a time. “It’s whether he can come back whole. And even there he has a flagrant disregard for his safety and his well-being—let alone just being able to have a personal life.” But Cooper admits he’s not entirely fearless. “I completely hate bugs,” he says. “The average New York cockroach is pretty bad, but in the Amazon they grow to, like, huge lengths that you can’t even imagine, and I believe they’re going for my jugular at all times.” His co-star, Jeff Corwin, says that the flying-roach-to-human ratio at their Brazilian camp was particularly high thanks to a neon light they used at night, giving him ample opportunity to torment Cooper. “I would just grab handfuls of bugs and throw them at Anderson and listen to him squeal.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Amy Odell
• Table of Contents: Oct 22, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!