Hair dirty and matted, homeless and struggling. He was a big dude. He came up to me and i was instantly on my guard. And he said where are you going and he said i am going to california and he said how much food do you have. I thought he wanted to rob me. He wanted me to open up my bag and i didnt know what was going to happen but i was jumpy about it. I said i have a little cheese. He was carrying a lunch box and said i lib in a broken down car and he said i walk out to the coal mine to see if anyone is sick and they can hire me. Most days they dont need to hire he and today they dont need me so i will not need my lunch. He had a baloney sandwich, apple and bag of potato chips and he said i want you to have my food because you will need all you can to get to california. You can imagine how bad i felt. It was my first lesson not in generosity but taking responsibility for another person you dont know. He looked at me on the highway and saw a brother. He saw someone on foot, homeless in his huge land. He didnt know i was having an adventure he thought where was a brother and walked out there to check and make sure i was all right. Host did you make to to california . Guest i did. I went to idaho, seattle, and down the coast. I was going to hitchhike home but ran out of steam. Back then people express flew you home for 150 and i had 153. Host how did you end up in nava navaho . Guest i trained with their best runner. In the summer of 1983, at any rate, i got out of college and wanted to be a writer and journalist. I got a job waiting tables and started writing and published things for local newspapers and wrote stories. I got a job as a climb for Tree Companies eventually. I would work 5070 feet Nathaniel Philbrick air on a rope with a chain saw taking down trees and in the and i got hurt doing it. It is a dangerous job. I got hurt and i was recovering from that and thought maybe i should write about dangerous jobs. Yauz about to turn 30 years old and i was like i have to do something. I was. Commercial fishing was one of the dangerous jobs i wanted to write about. A huge storm sunk a local boat and that set me on the trajectory toward the perfect storm a true story of men against the sea, fire, a death in belmont, and war. But another dangerous job was war reporter. In case i could not sell my storm book i thought i would be to where there is a civil war and learn to be a war reporter and either get write about war reporting or be a war reporter. I was trying to buy as many lottery tickets to my future. I wound up there as a free lance war reporter in the summer of 1993 and 1994. Host how did you survive over there daytoday . Did you have money or a backup system . Guest no, i went over the are the same backpack, sleeping back and everything i hiked across. I had a couple thousand dollars. I fell in with other freelance reporters and we squeezed into one room in the radio and Television Building and were sharing expenses. They had been there longer than me and i started immolating them and doing reports and newspapers. I spent more money than i made but it was a kind of journalism school. I learned how to be a journalist in a foerreign environment, in war, and fell in love. I had to come home to write my book, the perfect storm a true story of men against the sea, fire, a death in belmont, and war, i had an agent back then. I never made him a dime but he believed in believed in me and faxed me over there and said i sold your book and you have to come home and write it. I was a firsttime author and book and i went home and spent a couple years writing the perfect storm a true story of men against the sea, fire, a death in belmont, and war and as soon as i delivered the manuscript and this was 1996. You didnt hit send back then you put it in a box, got on the subway and went to fifth avenue where my publisher was and handed it to your editor. The next day i was on a plane to deli and on into afghanistan. In the summer of 1996 to watch the taliban offensive that would take coble kabul and overrun afghanistan. Five years before 9 11. I went back to reporting as fast as i could. Host is it addicting . Guest addiction is a chemical issue and i dont think it is addictive on that level. Metaphorically yes. I would say your identity develops independent on the drama and the importance of the job. I think soldiers have a similar thing. When you say addiction, it sounds misleading mechanical and chemical and i dont think it is. I think it is an identity problem. Host from your most recent book tribe you write humans dont mind perfectism they thrive on it. Modern life thrives on making people not feel necessary and it is time for that to end. Guest i believe in evolution and believe humans are a primate species. We evolved to live in groups of 4060 individuals. Our psychology and wiring in the brain and behavior during a crisis reflects that. The site of a platoon in a modern military force reflects that. What we have are we unemployedern society are basically Walking Around in our bodies that havent evolved physically in 25,000 years. There is a kind of cost and and the cost of living in small communal groups and in groups like that there is no individual survival outside of group survival. The group and the individual completely Share Interests and concerns. You get your sense of security in the world by being necessary to the group. If you are not necessary to any group you are in danger because they dont need you and you dont belong to theme and you are alone in the jungle and will die. When you feel necessary and volunteer to do something for a group and 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. Your neighborhood doesnt need you to help you gather food. You dont need your neighborhood to help defend you from your other neighborhood. Right . There is a great freedom in that individualism. The downside is you dont feel anything necessary to any group bigger than your immediate family and we are wired to think that is bad news. We are now in an insecure and dangerous place. With soldiers come back combat they come back from a platoon for each person is necessary and reproduces our evolutionary path closely with the group dynamics. They come back to that to this individualistic society where you can crank your music as loud as you want in your bedroom and do whatever you want and it is all wonderful except you lose that sense of safety that is being part of a group. Even soldiers not in combat and most were not come back and encounter psychological struggles. 25 of peace core volunteers even when they come back to the country sink into a depression much like soldiers and soldier whose were not in combat. It seems to be a transition problem. Host what i learned from your book tribe is two things. The suicide rates of communal organizations or communal living arrangements the suicide rate was nil or very, very low. And then a lot of white people when the indians were being, you know, pushed west went to the indian side of life. Guest yeah, i think the por portion of people along the frontier who abducted and didnt want to be returned was low but what was significant was it never went the other way around. And Benjamin Franklin and other thinkers and writers at the time were basically wondering why is it we have a superior Christian Society in their mind . Why is it that white people were also running off and killing the tribes . These were their words not mine. And tribal people were never running off and joining the indians. People go native not civilized. It was a concern of colonial thinkers and christian thinkers calling them indians and s savages. I thought about that and i have known that fact most of my life and wondered if it was true. When i was in afghanistan, where was with a platoon in combat and there was a lot of combat and closeness and Human Connection. The guys, you know, we are on this ridge top getting attacked a lot and there was no internet or communication with the outside world or no way to basic, no cooked food, nothing except combat and each other. The guys couldnt wait to get off the hill top and back to italy where they are based and have themselves a good time. You can imagine what that looked like. After a few months of that when i caught up with them, a real depression set in and a lot of them wanted to go back to afghanistan and didnt want to return to the United States and if they had a choice they would be back to combat. It made me think about the phenomena i read along the american frontier. Why doesnt anyone want to go back to the civilization if it is obviously wonderful thing . We have cars, television, surgery, where is the problem . That is what my book is about. What is it about modern society that is actually unappealing. Host did you have that reaction after returning . Guest i had a lot of psychological problems when i came back and i was just a civilian journalist. I spent a lot of time there and your sense of physical safety comes directly out of the experience of being part of a group. The deal is if you are in a group you are counting on for your own safety it means that you have to be prepared for risk your own life for them as well. It is reciprocal; right . The experience you end up having is one it is an odd one because you feel safer in that situation because you identify a willingness to risk your life for other people. That is what gives you your sense of safety. The willingness to take a risk for others. It is a kind of altruism where you dont need to feel back home in civilization. Along with that comes an incredibly powerful bond and real lover. One of the guys said in the platoon there is guys who straight up hate each other but we would die for each other. When you experience that kind of unity it is a very profound thing. I experienced enough of it even as a civilian that when i came home i felt incredible. I was married at the time in my 40s and i felt incredibly dislocated and depressed. My marriage didnt last actually. I fell completely disconnected from my wife and everyone i love. It was a really strange experience. What i kept thinking about was those guys and it was extremely confusing. This is from your previous book, war. Men with completely remake themselves in war. You could be anything back home shy, ugly, rich, poor, unpopular and it wont matter because it is of no consequence in a fire fight and therefore of no consequence period. Guest ye guest yeah it is on unconsciously appealing thing about the military or any extreme environment. I think it happens on teams that climb everest or whatever and firemen in the city and bl fishermen and whatever. All of these situations where people depend on others for their lives and everyone doing their job and functioning well. It doesnt matter what kind of funky past you have as long as you do your job well. That means everyone is self defining. In other words, if you do your job well, your past, history, what you look like, what your father did or didnt do, whether you are in prison or not, none of it matters. You have access to a fresh start in the eyes of your peers around you and the people you love. Who wouldnt rick their life for that . Risk. The reason high cool is so miserable for so many people is you are judged for things you have no control over. What you look like, what kind of family you were born into. Being in in combat you dont bring that with you out there. You just bring your willingness to die for other or not. Host this is from tribe. Live in an american suburb left me somewhat irresponsiblely dealing with tornado or something that would make us band together to survive and something that makes us feel like a tribe. Guest we evolved to live in small groups where people depend on each other for survival. I looked around in this very safe sururb and i you know, i was acutely aware i never demonstrated by personal value to my community. Where i was a strong 18yearold man going unused by my community. That is new. In modern society we are wealthy enough and stable enough that a young man can feel unnecessary to the people around him. It is extraordinary. It doesnt feel good. Host when you got your draft card when you turned 18 why didnt you sign up . Guest i was born in 1962 and group up during vietnam in a liberal part of the county. Every adult i knew was outraged by vietnam and they ended the draft. I got this Selective Service card in the mail. Girls dont get this. Many dont know about it. Boys get it and still do. If you are male and turn 18 you get a card from your government saying we want to know where you live so we can draft you in case we need you. I was like what is is this . I thought the draft was over . War is immoral. I go to my father and growing up in europe and his father was jewish and they grew up in france and when they left france and ended up in the United States. I said i am not signing this. And he said you are signing it. There are thousands of graves for Young Americans your age in france. They died freeing the world from fascism. He said you dont owe your country nothing. You owe your country something. You might owe your country your life. If a war comes along that is immoral and unnecessary it is your moral duty to protest it. But when it is moral like world war ii you help your community. That feeling of being something bigger is intoxicating to people. You live in new york city, have you found that platoon size community to be part of something bigger. The reason that things like sports team or intermural hockey or the work group in your office or the construction crew or whatever it is. The reason those things feel good is because they mimic the kind of tribal connections that characterize our living groups for hundreds of thousands of years. I live on the Lower East Side of manhattan. It is a neighborhood that is quite poor and as a result quite familiar. I know the street crossing guard, the meter maids, the car garage down the street and everyone knows each other. It feels human and connected in ways i really, really like and during Hurricane Sandy the building i am in organized a community defense. They posted guard shifts at the front door with machetes and they guarded the parliament apartments. These are poor people. One lady, a woman organized guard shifts with the front door and she had a musheachete and t took turns standing there keeping the building safe. When i was a kid outside of boston i would have loved to be part of a situation where i had to stand guard. That is like, you mean my building needs me . That would have been an intoxicating feeling. Host what is the corn val y valley . Guest it is a valley where the platoon where was with was stationed for more than a year. There was a lot of combat there. For a period while i was there Something Like a six of all kinetic activity which is what the military calls combat was happening in and around the immediate area of the corn gall. I and my colleagues made a movie called restrepo that brought a lot of attention to the area and i wrote about the second battalion air company we were with. A lot of other great journalists wound up there as well. And so it became emblematic for the frustrating problem. Host how long did you spend . Guest they were there 15 month and tim and i did five one month trips. We covered a fair amount of time. Host how Much Technology was used there . The military technology . Guest well an m4 is technology. If you mean electronics and eves draufbing devices they had eves dropping drones over us. Not a lot. Out of restrepo we were really were 20 guys on a hill top and the fighting was pretty old style like infantry on the ground with heavy packs and guns. I wouldnt Say Technology really took the balance particular. When the americans left the corn gull valley was it controver controversy . Guest i am sure. They fought hard for it and then pulled out. So i think inevitable it was. The controversy failed to understand what the point of being there was in the first place. It was never meant as a permanent base. The country pulled out of all of afghanistan. They first wanted to pull out of the finger values that were using up a lot of air resources to resupply these tiny outposts. The point of the american basis in the corrin gull was the valley was being used to insurgeant attacks along an important area. So u. S. Troops in that area blocked that capability for the taliban. When they finished the Development Project in the pegs they pulled out of the corn gull as well. But of course the controversy was a political one not a strategic one. That is where there controversy took place and that is what it stood for in the publics perception. Host Sebastian Junger, when you look at your body of works, vanity fair articles, is there a Common Thread or theme . Guest well, lets see, i guess i have often written about small groups of peep, mostly men, who are reliant on one another to survive. This was a cold case murder from the early 60s and different but my other books, people in small groups doing working with the margins of society in dangerous places are as an anthropologist it is interesting to me. You can see this in stark ways in those situations. I am endlessly fascinated by that. Good afternoon and welcome to booktvs in depth program. Our guest this month is Sebastian Junger. This is a three hour program where we walk with one author about his her or body of work and this month it is mr. Sebastian junger who has written books, a murder in belmont, the perfect storm a true story of men against the sea, fire, a death in belmont, and war, fire, war and his most recent book is called tripe. If you could like to par adverti pawe will put up the numbers. And you can send a text message. This is not for phone calls. 2028386251. And if you would, if you you do send a text message, give us your first name and your city so we can identify you that way. There are several other ways of getting ahold of us. You can make a comment on our facebook page. Facebook. Com booktv. Or you can join us on twitter, booktv is our twitter handle. And finally send an email to booktv cspan2. Org lots of different ways for you to connect with us this afternoon. Now, mr. Junger i want to read a quote from an interview you did and this is about how you write and what you look for. Readers just arent that interested in peoples biographies. They dont really care that much what town they grew up in. I really try to avoid the details that seem not necessar