Anderson Cooper bid farewell to CBS News‘ 60 Minutes on Sunday night after 20 years on the newsmagazine by praising the show’s “independence” and “trust it has with viewers.”

“I hope 60 Minutes remains 60 Minutes,” he said in an interview on 60 Minutes Overtime. “There’s very few things that have been around for as long as 60 Minutes has and maintain the quality that it has, and things can always evolve and change, and I think that’s awesome, and things should evolve and change, but I hope the core of what 60 Minutes is always remains.”

60 Minutes has been making headlines recently under its new ownership of David Ellison and Ellison’s hiring of CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss. In December, Weiss pulled a segment on the “brutal and torturous conditions” at the El Salvador prison where the Trump Administration sent deportees. An official statement said the story “needed additional reporting.”

60 Minutes has also faced criticism for reportedly sidelining legendary correspondent Lesley Stahl and drafting in Major Garrett to interview Benjamin Netanyahu, after negotiations between Weiss and the Israeli prime minister.

And President Trump won a victory after suing the company over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The lawsuit resulted in parent company Paramount Global settling in a $16 million payout. Part of the settlement agreement included stipulations for Paramount to release 60 Minutes transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates post-air.

“I think the independence of 60 Minutes has been critical,” Cooper continued on Overtime. “I think also the variety of stories. When you see a 60 Minutes story and you’re like, ‘That was a really good story,’ it was a good story because it requires time, it requires patience, it requires money. … I hope 60 Minutes is around for when my kids grow up and have kids of their own and they can watch it with their kids.”

Cooper said a couple of factors led to his decision to depart the show.

“The whole time I’ve done pieces at 60 Minutes, my full-time job has been over at CNN and still is, and it’s been really challenging to do the kind of work you need to do to,” he said, sharing that he’s worked on his 60 Minutes stories mostly while using his vacation time from CNN. “I’ve loved it, but it’s been tough.”

The second reason? His kids.

“I’ve got a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, and I want to spend as much time with them as I can while they still want to spend time with me, and on those days, that clock is ticking,” he said. “I don’t think the reality has really hit me that I’m not gonna be doing this any longer, you know, to give up something you’ve watched since you were a kid, yeah, I will miss this.”

Cooper also delved more into his passion for 60 Minutes as a child.

“I was a weird little kid,” he said. “I liked watching news. After my dad died there was a lot of silence in my house and we would watch the news over dinner, you know something like the old-time CBS correspondents.”

He then praised legendary 60 Minutes correspondents including Morley Safer, Mike Wallace and Bob Simon, marveling he got the latter’s office when Simon died.

“60 Minutes has always been a place, at least for me, that you get to step into somebody else’s shoes,” Cooper said. “You get to see things through their eyes and see what their struggles are and what  they are facing, and you learn from that. … You never knew what you were going to get, but you were willing to go for the ride because you trusted the people on it that it was going to be a good story.”

He said doing a story for 60 Minutes feels “like you’re stepping into people’s lives and you’re invited into people’s homes. You’re invited into their struggles. You’re invited into whatever it is that has brought them to be on 60 Minutes. … Sometimes it’s something wonderful they’ve done, sometimes something terrible that’s happened to them. … It feels like making a human connection with somebody, being able to ask somebody, you know, deeply personal questions and having conversations with people. It’s a privilege.”

The Overtime segment featured clips of Cooper’s interviews with Donald Sutherland, Dave Grohl, Adele, Timothée Chalamet, Holocaust survivor Irene Weiss and more, along with clips where Cooper got to take part in some high-adventure activities, from scuba diving to find Nile crocodiles to jet skiing the big waves of Nazaré, Portugal, with legendary surfer Garrett McNamara — which resulted in him burning his corneas from the UV reflection off the water.

Cooper also mentioned how high the bar is at 60 Minutes to get a story on air, noting that everyone who works on the show is the “best” in their field. 

At the end of the segment, Cooper got emotional when saying the correspondents’ signature intro — “I’m Anderson Cooper” — for the last time. Watch it below.