[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] trained to on a robbery committed by his cousin and other a very eventful and wonderful day so far at the savanna book festival. Youre at the Trinity United Methodist church United Methodist church which has been our venue here all day long. We feel very fortunate to have this space for the 11th annual savanna book festival. This venue hasy been made possible by the generosity of jackie mary romanos. My name is roger smith and at the pleasure of serving as a volunteer for the savanna book festival and im delighted with your participation. The savanna book festival is presented by georgia power, david and nancy st. John, the Sheehan Family foundation and the american pet suing. We would also like to thank our wonderfuler literati members as well as individual donors whose contributions have made in the past and continue to make saturday at the savanna book festival a free and public event. Inueor fact, 90 of the revenuer the book festival comes from donors just like rs you. Its a great pleasure to thank you for your s support. Before we get started, let me to go for housekeeping details for you. First of all immediately following the presentation are author, trained to come will be the book signing venue where he will be glad to talk with you a little further into stine books you have purchased the savanna book festival. Please take a moment right now to make sure that your cell phones and other Electronic Devices are turned off or in the silent mode so that we wont have electronic disruptions during the talk. If its your intention to take photographs during the presentation, make sure that the flash on your phone or camera is turned off. During the questionandanswer portion after the presentation today, i ask that you raise your hand if you have a question and give one of our ushers in a couple questions to get to you. It is important that you hold a microphone when u. S. Or question , otherwise viewers on cspan and people in the audience will be unable to your question. Also, when you have it in your hand, make sure that your question actually is a question rather than a statement or a story. Our author today, ben blum is here courtesy of the generosity of villainy in a while. Ben blum holds a phd from the university of california berkeley as well as an msa infection from New York University where he was awarded the New York Times foundation fellowship. His debut book in subject for todays talk is his 2017 book entitled ranger games appeared restraint and give anyone savanna welcome to ranger ben. [applause] thank you so much for having me here. Ive been strolling around savanna all day with my wife and sixyearold daughter and i have to say i think every city should be required to have a niceum little monument every two boxes youre walking around. Its perfect for strolling around. More than anything its perfect for hunting pokemon and pokemon go which is what our daughter is most excited about. Weve been really enjoying the spanish mosque in regency architecture. It takes place about four hours a of here were pending from a different site of church. So you might be forgiven for thinking that this is a book about war, but its not actually a book about war. The cover does have soldiers on it in the subtitle, but ranger games was about a lot of things on the periphery, its about family, its about the way good intentions go round and maybe more important than anything its about growing up. It is about the beautiful illusions that propel us to follow our dreams in the way that those solutions can crumble as we get older often making space for something, but sometimes reeking some major havoc on the way. So ranger games is the true story of my cousin, alex, whom i grew up with in denver, colorado. We were both kind of weird kids growing up into phd you heard about was not in english or journalism or anything that would have been remotely helpful to writing this book. Science. Computer osha can take a math nerd i was a little kid. For halloween i dressed up as a jacket featuring Company Called star to anyone who knows what that is. But alex was in his own way just as weird. He was obsessed with military from a very young age. Absolutely fascinated with all things are made. He always had his nose buried in a book, but the books he was reading stacked up on the shelf next to mine. He was into band of brothers from the time he was 10 years old. Black hawk down, red badge of courage can any military drumming he could get his teeth into. And so, we started hearing from alex when he was a kid that he wanted to be a soldier when he grew up. Ack common dream for a young bo, but he really stuck with it. His freshman year in high school two weeks into the year, september 11th paved and i think that is the point when his goal started to get a lot more real, a lot more serious. He enlisted shortly after his birth day. By then, his goal was to survive a brutally difficult election programma called the Ranger Indoctrination Program to make it to the elite special operations ranger regiment. He achieved that shortly after his 19th birthday, was posted to fort lewis, washington in four months later served as the driver and an Armed Bank Robbery organized by a superior in the rangers. He was arrested shortly afterward. He served 16 months in federal prison in shortly after his release started talking to me about the crying. So i spent about seven years all told trying to get to the bottom of how alex come in the goody two shoes of the families who had done cartoonishly patriotic and idealistic as a kid had come to be involved in this bizarre crime. The big question that i grapple with over and over with as they come to this process is how do you support someone who has done something terrible that caused a lot of harm to himself and to others. How do others. How do you help them reckon with what weve done . I will sort of alternate some reading for some conversation about the b book. I will open with a passage about what alex and i really growing up in denver. From the time we were kids, alex always had a simple dream, to defend his country from the forces of evil in depression. None of us took this very seriously, but him. After school the suburbs of denver hed run off in his camouflage tshirt and cargo pants to play command on the canal that will through the neighborhood, laying traps with dried seed pods and hiding behind cocktails to watch joggers chomping yet this to ground its loaded beneath their feet. He rented every army movie cover the local blockbuster carried, played every video game that they werent very witty many women just men with high men with high take your men with hightech air trapping of groups from helicopters to the sounds of the unforgettable jingle, and be all that you be in the army paybacks and alex and i barely spoke. Not overlap. Lds do by age seven and become known in the family as a math prodigy green fields for alex but commie guerrillas i thought burns and spiraling pinecones self manifolds i felt super market captures how lazer berks county lifeguard introductions to this quote equations. I was a realized now completely insufferable. Human relations were not my specialty. Too complicated. By 13 i was taking calculus and physics at the university of colorado. The only real Common Ground i have with alex lay between the tattered Street Parking in his driveway for an summer afternoons he would occasionally scurry around my knees and destroy me, smiling and triumph each time he scored. He was fighters younger but already a buddingou star. Our fathers have made efforts of manly education. Alexs father norm is the assistant coach of his hockey team with the elite little 10 Hockey Association including a smattering of praise from the nhl duringat the night to 92 player strike. My own father was a quarterback coach Richard Washington high schools Football Team downtown, both raced bicycles competitively in the brutal front range of the rocky mountains, rocky mountains, played pickup street hockey in p warehouse ringed. Skied, golf, climb and pumped iron. Summers to take his campaign in the foothills, hiking through the canyons from the fission of the tick infested ranchland of our texas relatives. The secular plug centers, jim shotguns on her shoulders, pointed us towards a point that the other end of grouping enabled us until we squeezed the trigger. It helped it better with alex and with me. Even when he was still in School Reports of the shining allamerican this began filtering in shoveling snow for an elderly neighbor, coaching the kids at hockey camp, defending classmates against bullies at Littleton High school. Though he was trying he was fined at tournaments all over the country, he became more and more serious about the only thing. It seemed to me as to me as if he had felt pretty made up a toy store display rack and a g. I. Joe action figure and now padilla to basic model world of attachments and products were availableer to him. His appeal life of heroic accomplishment, and american life, a triumph. So i knew when i published ranger games that some people are going to take it as ans antiwar vote, but its really not that either pick your talking to alex in a number of other soldiers, hiking the huge appreciation for their bravery, their discipline, their integrity in the deep carried they show each other. Alex are both raced on stories of her grandfather, al senior served in the army in world war ii. He landed in normandy shortly after dday. And although the stories that what alex then they made to c m, ive also come to appreciate the warrior eats oc passed down through his sons, and the deep bonds of trust with fellow soldiers and the willingness to just keep on going no matter how tough and how painful it can. In the Ranger Indoctrination Program he went through after basic training, he and his buddies entered held together. They out one point had to group in a team of hold telephone poles for 48 hours, taking naps in brief shifts underneath them. There was today saturday month long process of extreme physical pain and endurance. After surviving the cut, most soldiers quit, but alex did not. He was posted to fort lewis and began learning what his new job would entail as a cherry private under the guidance of the highranking soldiers to a combat. The next passage is about the way the formal training spilled over into the moree informal setting that soldiers had in their offou hours. Those months were transformative for all but cherry privates. At night and on weekends, they ventured into two, with new eyes. Every door was a potential brief point. A red sun concealing him. Every dennys dining room petition dining room petition in two linesti of fire pit civilias looked more and more like anothers pcs entirely pay cherry privates watched in amusement as men and women with giant step air huddled over menus, threw napkins over their laps, wiped their childrens mouths. One night after airplane hangars, alex and his buddies went to see the new xmen movie at the multiplex highly in all they could talk about wind up in the dark among teenagers who had no idea they were surrounded by rangers was how simple it be a takedown theater. They all try to outdo each other in assessment of the tactical problem which was almost identical to that of the hangar victory exits come of it done for the projection come and pick interior space with a bunch of sheep to hurt, piece of cake. Talk of ending spots around tacoma was a reliable way to show off knowledge and sound hard come a realworld application in the classroom sessions based on Satellite Photos of al qaeda complexes. Whenever they watched haste movies they laughed at how much better they could do the jobau themselves. Tabs are fluent in the lingo of Tactical Planning but the sharper the privates were already thinking about. Pac pummels lucky to enjoy the special mentorship of specialistss on the. Even after his replacement has bums team later bums team leader come the specialist popped in once in a while with m16s were shined boots to ask for a ride inin the town. He wasas friendlier to the privates, taking more than a few facilities around tacoma, the blonde seemed to be a favorite of his. Sunspots and solar out of his father had given him for use of battalion was cool coming nickname at the transporter after one of his favorite movies in which a dissolution special forces operator brendan audia eight. Blonde try to have his nervousness about the ati stick shift from underwear summer wanted to go, chiles, starbucks, quiznos coming dairy queen,ma supermarket, he made a little less amount of it. Wheres our insult . I adore by the boot. Red zones . Behind that softserve thing. He forgot the bathroom. Bang, youre dead. All of us were completely flabbergasted by the arrest as youbete might imagine in the fit question that came to all of our minds was wide. Like where did this come from . Gradually come the story began to filter out. He was enabled to bother him for the first couple weeks and to hand this soldier came and apparently alex had believed the plans for the bank robbery were just one more special summers little games. A Training Exercise their suddenly got real. Some further reports began filtering outst is a very strane stuff going on alexs head while he was imprisoned in some kind of real illusionary statement none of us could wrap our heads around. Later he told us that even after his arrest when he was being held in federal detention, hed been waiting for some representatives to it. Tell him there been some kind of giant mixed up in a Training Exercise in the pending to iraq to be with his unit where he belonged. When i began talking to alex about the crime, he seemed so fragile and adamant about it, so earnestt and as his friend and cousin to support him. The more research i did as i started to write the book, the more evidence i found suggestive things were a little more complicated than alex is letting on. It i is right in the thick of al the family tension created as i started trying to get to the truth that dr. Philip lombardo, the social psychologist most famous for the prison experiment to it contributed to the Legal Defense called c alex up and asd him to appear in a special episode of the dr. Phil show titled when good people do bad things. The next passage does read this from the taping in hollywood where i was in the studio audience and by the time of this taping that was just a total nervous wreck. I had this sort of sense that alex might be lying to me in the family but i didnt have the evidence to prove it. The general sense seemed to be alex asoka beeston traumatize by the experience that the real story wasnt accessible to him at all if it existed in the first place. Dr. Phils big catchphrase is get real. Get real about your problems. I was going to call bs, calling him to get real about this crazy story on National Television in front of 3 millionro americans when i was trying to support him and get at the truth. When he got to alexs statement after cheerful prior segments on abu ghraib. Lights come action. Dr. Phil admitted another cloud of texan grammar, the tilting range than to the horizon. Now i have a worldfamous psychologist and renowned author dr. Phillips embargo here with us today and we are discussing his book, the lucifer effect. Understanding how good people turn evil. Let me tell you something. You need to read this book and you need to read it twice. He chuckled in the heroic effore impersonating someone who did not just make tens of thousands ofer dollars. Sitting stiffly in his chair, one shoulder higher than the other, alternating between the audience. Thats dr. Phils last name. Doesnt publicize the match. It really is very insightful continued dr. Phil. Today we talk about when good people do bad things. Obeying authoritys rule number one, look at what happened when one former ranger says he thought he was following routine orders they turned with a dr. Phil loco and stood in this tiny basement bedroom. The drumbeat started up almost a one. S what followed was a short series of edited together sentences, each of which i had at one time or another heard him saying to me, not one of which was individually untrue. The only possible unifying interpretation was some kind of bizarrear military dilution that none of the civilians could begin to comprehend. The music finished. There is a big cause. Okay so dr. Phil with a kind of side. He leaned forward in scrutinized alex renton beneath edward pointing browse. Having not been in a situation, all of us are saying now wait, what . He went through one of his patented full body fidgets. So what you are telling me, spreading out 10 of his fingers in an unprecedented double lets get real hand, emotions somewhat akin to whatever electricity from his fingertips into the spasming body of Luke Scott Walker is that you did not know penicillin now begin slapping his clenched fist with the palm of his other hand to punctuate each word, that you were involved in an Armed Robbery of a bank. After the episode aired, he had been coaching side roads at a locala. Ice arena, first chevy n should find since his release from prison when he was passionate about. Hard work finding work as a felon in america. He became better and hard to talk about the robbery. Instead i found myself turning to luke elliott summer, the ringleader, a very intelligent, very charismatic guy who had committed a host of acts including stabbing one of hisat coconspirators in trying to put a hit out on his prosecutors. I developed a strangely close relationship with him. He was upset at the same subject i was obsessed with as a kid feared he was even working with a professor San Francisco statet university who seem to think he was a genius about it. In our conversations about morality had been a mystery to him. Paradoxically, this made him much easier to talk to about the robbery thanan alex. Alex had such a hard time accepting that he had done somethingre wrong, but he had no sense of wrong at all. It had something to do with some kind of unprocessed guilt that he wasnt letting on about. The next passage is from the one inon person interview in kentucy seven hours straight, living in a dismal little visitation room. We talked briefly about the additional sentences he