Host you hitchhiked. Guest yeah. And guys were throwing beer bottles at me from pickup trucks, and id hitchhiked from twin cities and here i am in gillette and id never seen the west before. I was awestruck by it but gillette was a tough town, and i saw someone walking towards me from town that looked like bad news. And im a young kid out in the great land and kind of jumpy. This guy is walking towards me and i remember he was in a carhartt canvas union suit that was filthy dirty and his hair was matted and he clearly was homeless and struggling. He was big dude. He came up to me, and i was instantly on my guard. And he said, hey, man, where are you going . I said, im going california. And he said, how much food you got . Now, i would give food to anyone who was hungry, but i didnt think thats what was going on. Thought he wanted to rob me. Wanted me to get me to open up my bag. I didnt know what was going to happen but i was definitely jumpy. So, i said, i just got a little cheese. And he shook his ahead and said you cant possibly get to california on a little cheese. In his world, what you got in your bag is what you got. You dont have travelers checks in your wallet. And he was carrying a lunch box and he said, you know, i live in a broke down car in town. In other words he was homeless, living in a car. He said i walk out to the coal mine every day to see if anyone is sick and they can hire me. Most days they dont need to hire me. And today they dont need me so i wont be needing my lunch. And he showed me his lunch box and he had a baloney sandwich and an apple and a bag of potato chips elm said i want you to have my lunch because youre going to need all the food you can get to get to california. You can imagine how bad i felt. My first really profound lesson not in generosity, but in taking responsibility for another person that you dont know. He looked at me out on the highway and he saw a brother. He saw someone who was on foot, homeless in this huge land. He didnt know i was just a college kid having an adventure. He thought i was a brother and walked out there to check on a brother and make sure i was all right. Host did you ever make it to california . Guest i did. Went on up through idaho, and to seattle, and down the coast, wound up in l. A. , and i was going to hitchhike home and i ran out of steam. Back that peoples express would fly you across the country for 150 and i got a midnight flight home. Host how did you end up in sarajevo in 1994 . Sunny graduated college. Studied anthropology and did my work on the navajo reservation. I was a good Long Distance runner and i trained with thirst best runners. Summer of 1983, i think. At any rate, i got out of college and wanted to be a writer, journalist, and so i immediately got a job waiting tables and started writing, and publishing for local newspapers some short stories. Just didnt get vower. And i eventually got a job as a climber for tree companies, and so i would work 50, 60, 70, 80 feet in the air on a rope with a chainsaws, taking trees down and i got hurt doing it. Its a dangerous job and i got hurt and was recovering from that and i thought maybe i should write about dangerous jobs. Was about to turn 30. I got to do something itch got to figure this out. One of the dangerous jobs i wanted to write about what commercial fishing. I lived in goster, massachusetts, and a huge storm hilt the town and sunk a boat and that send me on the trajectory toward my first book a perfect storm. Another dangerous job i wanted to write about was war reporter and in case i couldnt sell my storm book, i thought ill go to sarajevo, theres a selfwar going and inll learn to be a war reporter and write about war i was trying to buy as many lottery tickets to my future as possible. So i wound up in sarajevo during the war as a free lance war reporter in the summer of 1993, and 1994. Host how did you survive over there dadetodade . Did you have money at that point in backup system . Guest no. I went over there with the same backpack i hitchhiked across the country with, and the same sleeping bag, and the same everything, i think. And i had a couple thousand dollars. And i fell enough with some other free lance reporters, and we were living squeezed into one room in the radio and Television Building and sharing our expenses and sharing everything, and theyd been over there a lot longer than i had. Just emplated them and started doing radio reports and a little newspaper. I spent more money than i made, but it was a kind of journalism school, and i learned how to be a journalist in a foreign environment, in a war, and mostly i fell in love with that, and i had to come home to write my book the perfect storm. By some miracle i had an agent back then. Never made him a dime but he believed in me. He faxed me over there and said ive sold your book. You got to come home to write it now. Was quite disappointing because i had fallen in love with war reporting but also a firsttime author and i went home and spent a couple of years writing the perfect storm. As soon as i delivered the manuscript and this is 1996. So back then, when you turned in a map uscript you didnt hit send. You put it in a box and you got on she subway and went uptown to where my publisher was, w. W. Norton, and gave it to your hand it to your editor. The next day i was on a plane to delhi and then into afghanistan and in the summer of 1996, to watch the taliban offensive that would eventually take kabul and overrun most of afghanistan. So this is five years before 9 11. I went right back to foreign reporting as fast as i could, like literally the next day. Host is it addicting . Guest is war reporting addicting . Technically, addiction is a chemical issue, and i dont think addicting on that level. Metaphor include, yes. You develop a what i would say its more like this. Your identity develops independence on the drama and the importance of the job. Soldiers have the same thing. When youve say addiction it sounds misleadingly mechanical and chemical and i isnt. Its an identity problem. Host from your most recent book tribe you write that humans dont mind hardship. In fact they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society is perfectedded the art of making people not feel necessary. Its time for that to end. Guest also i said i studied anthropology in college and i feel were a primate species. Humans are a primate species, were social species. We clearly evolved to live in groups of 40, 50, 60 individuals. Our psychology reflects that. The wiring in our brain reflects that. Our behavior during crises reflects that. The size of a platoon in a modern military force reflects that. And so what we have are we in modern society are basically Walking Around in our sort of bodies that havent evolved physically in 25,000 years and were Walking Around in this Amazing Society that we created, and we could list the blessings and the benefits of modern society almost endlessly. The cost is that were no longer living in small communal groups and in groups like that there is no individual survival outside of group survival. The group in the individual completely Share Interests and concerns, and so you get your sense of security in the world by being necessary to the group. If youre not necessary to any group, youre in danger because they dont need you. You dont belong to them and they wont sacrifice for you. And youre alone in the jungle and youre going to die. Thats what is wired into our brains. So when you feel necessary, when you volunteer to do something for a group, when you suddenly realize a group of people are counting on you, it feels good because it means you have physical and emotional security around you. And the modern society has allowed individuals to live very individualistic lives where their community does not need them. Your neighborhood doesnt need you to help them gather food. You dont need your neighborhood to help defend you from the other neighborhood. Theres a great freedom in that kind of individualism. The downside is you dont feel necessary to anything bigger any group bigger than your immediate family probably, and were wired to think thats bad news. That we are now in an insecure place, a dangerous place. When soldiers come back from combat, they come back from a platoon where each person is necessary. A practice to an that preproduces our evolutionary past closely in the Group Dynamics and relationship between the individual and the group. They come back with that to this marvelously individualistic society where you can crank your music as loud as you want in your bedroom, and do whatever you want, and its all wonderful. Except you lose that sense of safety that comes from being part of a group, and one of the things soldiers struggle with, even soldiers who werent in combat, and most soldiers are not in combat. Even people who werent in combat come back from the close communal environment to third individualistic society and encounter pretty significant psychological struggles. Peace corps volunteers, 25 of volunteers when they come back to this country sink into a real depression. Much like soldiers do, and again, soldiers who werent in combat. It seems to be a transition problem. Host well, what i learned from your book tribes is two things. The suicide rates of communal organizations or communal living arrangements, the suicide rate was either nil or very, very low, and that a lot of white people, when the indians were being pushed west, went to the indian side of life. Guest yeah. The proportion of people along the frontier who absconded to the indians or were abducted and then didnt want to return. Of course it was quite low but while a significant was that it never went the other way around. Benjamin franklin and other thinkers and writers of the time were wondering why is it we have a superior Christian Society in their mind. Why is it that white people were always running off to join the tribes . These are their words. Not mine. Why was that happening . And tribal peoples were never running off to join the indians. People go native. They dont go civilized and it was matter of real puzzle and concern to colonial authorities and christian thinkers. They called the indians called them savages. Why . Whats the appeal exactly . And i thought about that. Id known that fact most of my life, and always wondered if it was true, and then when i was in afghanistan i was with a platoon in combat, 20man position. A lot of combat, a lot of closeness, a lot of Human Connection. And the guys we were on this ridgetop, getting attacked a lot. There was no internet no communication with the outside world no way to bathe. No cooked food there was no women. There was nothing. Right, except combat and each other. And the guys couldnt wait to get off that hilltop and get back to italy, where theyre based, and have themself others good time. You can imagine what that looked like. But after a few months of that, when i caught up with them in italy where theyre based, a real depression has sedset in and a lot of them wanted to go back to afghanistan and did not want to return to the United States, that if they had a choice they would go back into combat. Made me think of what i had read, the phenomenon i read along the american frontier, why no one wants to go back to six. What this problem . It its an obviously wonderful thing. We have cars and air conditioning and television and anesthesia, surgery. Where is the problem . And that is basically what my book is about. What is it about modern society that is unappealing. Host did you have that reaction after returning . Guest i had a lot of psychological problems when i came back. Wasnt even a soldier. I was just a civilian journalist but i spent a fair amount of time out there and your i mean, this is what i was saying. Your sense of physical safety comes directly out of the experience of being part of a group. The deal, though, is if youre in a group that youre counting on for your own safety, it means that you have to be prepared to risk your own life for them as well. Its reciprocal, and so the experience you end up having is one its an odd one because you feel safer in that situation because you identify a willingness to risk your life for other people. Thats what gives you your sense of safety, the willingness to take a risk for others and the kind of altruism that you really dont need to feel in back home in civilization. And along with that altruism comes an incredibly powerful bond and love. And one guy said to me, theres guys in the platoon who hate each other but wed all die for each other. When youre experiencing that kind of unity, its a very, very profound thing, and i experienced enough of it, even as a civilian, that when i came home i felt i was married at the time. I was in my 40s. And i felt incredibly dislocated and incredibly depressed. My marriage didnt last, actually. I fell completely disconnected from my wife and everyone i loved. I was a really, really strange experience, and what i kept thinking about was those guys, and it was extremely confusing. Host this is from your previous book war men can completely remake themselves in war. You can be anything back home. Shy, ugly, rich, poor, unpopular and it wont matter because its of no consequence in a firefight. And therefore, of no consequence, period. Guest yeah. Thats one of the thick unconsciously appealing things about the military and about combat or any extreme environment. I think you probably happens on teams that climb everest or whatever, and crews of forest firefighters and firemen in the city and loggers and all these situations where people depend for their lives on other people and on everyone doing their job and functioning well. It really doesnt matter what kind of funky past you might have had. As long as you do your job well. And that means that everyone is sort of selfdefining. In other words, if you do your job well, your past, your history, what you look like, what your father did or didnt do, whether you are in prison or not, none of it matters and you basically have access to a completely fresh start in the eyes of your peers around you, and these are people that you love. And who wouldnt risk their life for that . The reason that high school is so miserable for so many people is that you are judged for things you have no control over. What you look like. What kind of family you were born into. In combat you dont bring any of that with you out there. You just bring your willing ins to die for others or not. Host this again is from tribe. The sheer predictability of life in an american suburb left me hoping, somewhat irresponsiblefully, for a hurricane or tornado or something that would require us to all band together to survive. Something that would make u. S. Feel like a make us feel like a tribe. Guest yes, again, we evolve to live in small groups groups e people completely depended on one another for survival, and i felt the tug of that very, very strongly as a young man. And i looked around and we lived in this very safe suburb and i i was acutely aware i had over in demonstrated my personal value to my community. My community didnt need mitchell was a strong, healthy, 18yearold man, going completely unused by my community. That is new in Human History. The young people, the 18yearold men and women both, obviously, are absolutely vital to the survival of the community, and in modern society, we are wealthy enough and stable enough that actually a young man can feel not necessary to the people around him. Its extraordinary. It doesnt feel good. Host so when you got your draft card, when you turned 18, why didnt you sign up . Guest well, i grew up i was born in 1962, now up during vietnam, a very liberal part of the country. Every adult i knew was outraged by vietnam, and then the ended the draft. Right . So i got this card in the mail in 1980 when i was 18 host selectiontive service card. Guest yes. Selective service card. Girls dont get this. Many of them dont even know about it. Boys get and it they still get it. If youre male and you turn 18, youll get acat card from your government saying we want no know where you live so we can draft you in case we need you. And i was like, what is this . I thought the draft was over. And anyway, war is immoral and whatever. So i showed it to my father, and my father had green up in europe. His father was jewish and they grew up in france and when the germans rolled into france they left and wound up in the United States. And he i said im not signing this. This ricediculous he said, no, youre signing that card. He said theirs thousands of brave young americans. Your age, in france, they died freeing the world from fascism. Saving the world. And he said, never forgot these words. You dont owe your country nothing. You owe your country something and you might owe your country your life. If a war comes along you think is immoral, thats unnecessary, then its your moral duty to protest it. But if its a necessary war, like world war ii was, its your moral duty to fine it so youre signing that card. When when he put that way, it was my chance to be part of something bigger to demonstrate to any community i was willing to be of service, id be a great soldier. All of a sudden it completely turned it around and i felt like i was part of something bigger, and that feeling of being part of something bigger is really intoxicating to people. And for great evolutionary reasons. We are the way we are for a very good reason, and i signed that card quite proudly. Host Sebastien Junger, you live here in new york city. How you found that community for you to feel like youre part of something bigger . No tribal structures have virtually disappeared in modern American Life in modern society. The reason that things like sports teams, intramural hockey, or the work group in your office, or the construction crew, whatever it is, the reason that those things feel good is because they mimic the kind of tribal connections that, whichized our living groups for hundreds of thousands of years. So i live in the Lower East Side of manhattan. Its a neighborhood that is quite poor. And as a result quite familial. I know the street crossing guard, the meter maid, the car garage down the street. Everyone kind of knows each other, and it feels human and connected in ways i really like, but during Hurricane Sandy there was the building im in organized a kind of community defense. They posted guard shifts at the front door with a machete, and they changed the guards every two hours because there was a lot of breakins bus people left their apartments because there was nolight or power and had children so they left their homes and these are not wealthy people. A woman organized guardships at the front door. She had a machete and they took turns standing there and kept the building safe. So that when i was a kid, in belmont, outside of boston, i woul