By playing, you agree to uListen's Terms and Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service.
Peter Attia MDFreedom, PTSD, war, and life through an evolutionary lens | Sebastian Junger & Peter Attia (Ep. 195)
Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,033 words- 0:00 – 0:10
Intro
- PAPeter Attia
[upbeat music] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
- 0:10 – 9:55
Sebastian’s upbringing and early lessons about the evil of fascism
- PAPeter Attia
Sebastian, I have been looking forward to sitting down with you for, God, it's been 18 months. It was pre-COVID, I know, when we first talked about sitting down, and then for obvious reasons, things got postponed. But, uh, nevertheless, here we are.
- SJSebastian Junger
It's thrilling to talk to you. Um, I, we have a lot to talk about. In our interview, I, I mean, when I interviewed you, it was really fascinating. Uh, I mean, I loved our conversation.
- PAPeter Attia
Well, there are a lot of things I'm looking forward to here, but perhaps the most trivial of them is getting to listen to you speak. I'm sure you've been told this before, but you may have the single greatest voice ever. So, um, just the fact that I'm gonna get to sit here and listen to you talk is fantastic, so, um-
- SJSebastian Junger
Thank you
- PAPeter Attia
... where did you grow up, Sebastian?
- SJSebastian Junger
Uh, I grew up, uh, outside of Boston in a little town called, called Belmont, Massachusetts.
- PAPeter Attia
Okay. Um, I wanna understand a little bit better about... Well, let's start with your dad. You, you, you know, your dad's a, a veteran, correct?
- SJSebastian Junger
No, he's not a veteran. I mean, he was a refugee from two wars.
- PAPeter Attia
Oh, okay.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. He grew up, he, he grew up in Europe. His dad was a journalist in Europe, um, European born, as was my dad, and, uh, they lived in Spain. Uh, and then they left when the fascists came in, in 1936 under Franco. They fled. Uh, his father was, my dad's dad was Jewish, and, uh, they fled to France, and then when the Nazis came in, uh, a few years later, they fled to the United States. And my, my dad, um, you know, made his life, life here, met my mom, and, uh, tried to join the US military, um, and couldn't because he had asthma. Uh, but he was enormously... So he served the country in other ways. He was a physicist, and he contributed to a lot of important projects that some of the, which involved the US military, the US government. But, um, he was enormously grateful to this country for our sacrifice in World War II. And, you know, it was interesting that his, um, implacable pacifism, uh, was also mixed with an understanding that sometimes war, sometimes force is necessary to protect humanity from, um, from fascism and other evils. So he had a very complex sort of understanding of our, our duties as, as citizens and our place in the world as America.
- PAPeter Attia
H- how did he communicate that to you, and, and how old were you when some of those lessons started to mean something more than just kind of the words that were spoken? If... Or, and did he communicate through direct words, or was it more, you know, indirect means?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, I mean, from, yeah, when we were growing up, the world, word fascist was like a, uh, a dirty word. I mean, I, you know, I grew up knowing that that was the sort of ultimate evil, and America stood diametrically opposed to fascism, that we were the opposite of fascism. We were the ultimate anti-fascist state. And, uh, and you know, I grew up during Vietnam, and I grew up in a very liberal environment, and so every adult I knew, everyone I knew was sort of anti-Vietnam, anti-war, and s- uh, by extension, and not fairly, but by extension, sort of anti-US military. I mean, that's just the environment I grew up in, right? So, um, I was very surprised and learned a lot when I said to my dad, you know, back then, I'm, I was born in 1962, so in 1980, I turned 18, and I got a card in the mail from the US government saying, "You're an 18-year-old, 18-year-old male. We need to know where you live, physically what your address is, in case we need to call you into combat." Right? And I said to my father, who I knew was a pacifist, I was like, "What the hell is this? Like, the draft is over. What do you mean my, the, my government needs to know where I am, uh, and not my, doesn't need to know where my sister is, but where I am in case they need me to fight a, one of their wars," right? And, uh, I was like, "I'm not signing this." And, uh, I expected my father to wholly approve the message, right? And, uh, you know, my message that I wasn't gonna sign this, and, uh, he said, "No, no, no, you're definitely signing it." He's like, "You, you know, you don't know, uh, what the next war is gonna be. It may be a righteous, it may be a war that needs to be fought like World War II was, and you don't owe your country nothing. You owe it something. And you may owe it your life depending on the circumstances. And if a war comes along that you feel is immoral and unnecessary, then it's your duty to protest and go to prison if you need to to protest it. But you don't know that yet. And you're gonna sign that card because you are part of this country, and it's a magnificent thing to be part of." And that completely turned around my thinking about, um, what it means to be an American citizen and a human being and to be part of a community. Uh, you know, it was, I mean, you know, what, whatever. It's, it's, it's 40, 35 years later, I'm still chewing over that one.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, I bet. Um, y- I, so you weren't really... I mean, yeah, you were probably a teenager as Vietnam was coming to an end. What were your dad's thoughts on that? I mean, did he kind of view that as a different war from World War II? I mean, obviously it was, but, um, how, how did he kind of vocalize that to you?
- SJSebastian Junger
Oh, a totally different war. He says unnecessary, and, you know, the, the, the, um, the, the, the, the specter of communism taking over the world, the, you know, he didn't believe that that wa- you know, the Gulf of Tonkin was a, was a straight up lie, right? So unlike 9/11, Vietnam started with, with a, a, a straight up lie, and they got us into a war that everyone knew was sort of unwinnable, and a lot of people thought was, was not needed, and, uh, which was very, very different from 9/11 and, and, and from World War II as far as my dad was concerned. Um, so he, you know, he hated the Vietnam War and, and, uh, um- Was very, um, you know, very, very adamant about it. A- as was every other adult I knew. I mean, it speaks to the community I was in. I coulda grown up somewhere else, and it would've been the opposite, but I didn't.
- PAPeter Attia
But it is, it does sorta speak to his ability to kind of balance simultaneous, uh, seemingly simultaneous contradictory facts, which is that he could look five years later, right? Vietnam ends in, what? '74, '75, they're pulling the last troops out, and in, you know, just five years later, you're getting a card that is effectively, you know, a draft card, and yet he can immediately pivot and say, "Well, wait a minute. No, no, no. This is very important," and I can put Vietnam out of my mind and say... 'Cause again, there's a recency bias that could have easily sounded like, "I don't want my son-"
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... being what, you know, one of the boys that got, you know, slaughtered there for no reason."
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. Well, he made it clear to me that if it's an immoral war, my job is to go to prison to protest it, if I need to. Like, to say, "Absolutely not," right? "You're not gonna use me for your immoral, your immoral designs," right? But, you know, e- equally strongly, I mean, the Holocaust burned... My dad was half Jewish. I'm a quarter Jewish, right? I mean, I don't identify in any cultural way with that quarter of me, but, um, you know, the Holocaust seared itself into the minds of humanity, uh, i- in the 1940s, and the sacrifice of American soldiers... Now, America acted, you know, out of its own interest and thought process. It didn't join World War II because of the Holocaust, but the fact is that there are thousands, tens of thousands of American troops buried in France, his home country of France, um, stopping fascism, uh, making sure that fascism did not take over Western Europe and the world, and, and that's his home country, right? And he's seeing the graves of American soldiers, young men his age, right? I mean, his, his contribution to that was, you know, when they fled Paris and the Germans had, um... They took Paris, you know, without a fight. It was a negotiated surrender, and they sent advance units and tank columns deep, deep into France to grab the, the Spanish border, and, uh, which of course, across the border with Franco. It was a friendly regime, a n- friendly fascist resi- regime. So my f- my, my father and his family fled by car, and, um, they were in Bayonne, and he s- he was out, he was 18. He's walking down the street, and he sees a, a, an, a German officer on foot in front of a column of tanks, and they're creeping down a boulevard, and the officer turns to him and says, "Do you know which way it is to the center of town?" 'Cause they didn't know. They didn't have maps. They didn't know, right? This g- And my father, um, spoke German. I mean, he spoke just about every language in Europe 'cause they lived all over the place. My father was born in Dresden. He spoke German ba- you know, the Fr- the German officer was speaking bad French. My father spoke back to him in perfect German, and s- and lied to him and said, "Yeah, the center of town's that way," and pointed the entire tank column in the office- opposite direction, and off they went. So that was his little act of rebellion, right? And, uh, um, his dad said, "Don't ever be that stupid again 'cause they will kill you. If they f- if they, if he found that out, he woulda killed you right there," right? So, so my fa- you know, that kind of experience doesn't, doesn't leave you, and his, his, um, his for- he, you know, he thought the world, the foremost threat to, uh, to y- to freedom and human dignity in the hum- and, and the human race was fascism in his mind. So Vietnam was a blip in the screen with that, right? I mean, fascism was it, a- and, and, uh, you know, I would argue it still is it. Like, that is still the threat, and we've, this country has gone through a little taste of it, and, uh, you know, we came out hopefully stronger, but that, you know, that boogeyman has not gone away in human society.
- 9:55 – 18:58
Sebastian’s search for a career, interest in writing, and what he loved about tree removal
- PAPeter Attia
So when did you, uh, decide what you wanted to study in college, and what did you study in college?
- SJSebastian Junger
Um, I grew up... My, my dad, you know, was a physicist, but he was v- very enamored of history and of anthropology, and I grew up reading anthropology, anthropological works. I was very interested in the Native, Native American society, societies, and, um, uh, I was also a really good long distance runner in high school and college. I ran, uh, 4.12 for the mile and went on to run 221 marathons, so I had some, you know, not, not world-class, obviously, not even close, but I was, like, a pretty good runner, and I found out, uh, in college that the Navajo were really good long distance runners. And, you know, when I was in college, I wasn't in college to get a career. I was in college to learn stuff that interested me, which was anthropology, right? And a number of other things. And, uh, and so I majored in anthropology, and I decided to do field work on the Navajo reservation, and I went out there, uh, 1983, I think it was, and spent a summer on the reservation training with their best guys, and I wrote a thesis on Navajo long distance runners, and that was the first time, like, I researched something and then wrote about it. You know, basically the work of journalism. So when I got out of college, I did construction for a little while, trying to figure out what I was gonna do, and I was on a, I was sponsored by, uh, um, Etonic running shoes. I was, uh, running local road races. I was a sponsored athlete at a sort of, like, regional level, and, uh, trying to figure out what am I gonna do with my life? And I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll be a journalist." Like, that's pretty close to what my thesis was, and I th- when I was writing my thesis, I was just on fire. I mean, I just loved it. I was a very middling student, and the thesis, I was, I got honors, and I just, I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna be a journalist." It was a long, tortuous path to get there, but that was my sort of naive decision when I was 21 or whatever.
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs] Now, I remember hearing you in an interview years ago. I don't remember which interview it was, but you talked about a, a job you had felling trees. You were, you were kind of in a, in a, in a logging job. Where was that, and, and how old were you? Was that post-college as well?
- SJSebastian Junger
No, it wa- uh, yeah, yeah, it was post-college. [laughs] Uh- That was, I was in my late 20s, so you know, like fast-forward some years out of college, I still haven't figured it out, right? I'm still not trying to be a writer, trying to be a journalist. I, basically I don't have a clue. And, uh, but I'm reading a lot, a lot of good writers, Peter Matthiessen, Joan Didion, Ernest Hemingway, a lot of great writers, and I'm writing and writing and writing and getting occasional things published, but I'm turning into a better writer, but I couldn't make a living. And I was sick of waiting tables, and I got a job as a climber for tree companies. And so it wasn't logging, it was residential tree work.
- PAPeter Attia
Okay.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right? And you need climbers. You need, if you don't have a crane, you need a guy up in the tree on a rope with a chainsaw. You know, I was a pretty athletic young man and, and I took to it very, very quickly, and I was good at it. And you know, basically you're swinging around on a rope with a pair of climbing irons, you know, strapped to your legs and y- y- to, to your feet and, uh, with a chainsaw, and you have to, you know, you, I was taking down these big, big trees, some of them, you know, 100, you know, white pines 100 feet high, topping them out and taking them down in a fa- in a small space. Like, I can take a tree down in a space that's the size of the, like, footprint of the tree, right? Like, I mean the size that the tree is fr- viewed from above, I can take a tree down in that space with ropes and a chainsaw and, and a climbing saddle. And, uh-
- PAPeter Attia
By the way, I just wanna point out how familiar I am with this because of my middle child, who's, uh, just turned seven, but he's obsessed with this process, and there's this series on YouTube called Pine Tree Removal Part One-
- SJSebastian Junger
[laughs]
- PAPeter Attia
... Pine Tree Removal Part Two, and Pine Tree Removal Part Three. Each of these videos is about two hours long, so it's, taken together it's a six-hour series exactly as you're describing it, which is-
- SJSebastian Junger
My-
- PAPeter Attia
... 120-foot pine tree in a subdivision between two houses that are 30 feet apart, and it has to come down. And the six-hour video is how long it takes to take, bring the tree down minus any spaces. So it edits out, you know, the pauses and the lunch breaks and the bathroom breaks. But basically, there are three major sections that have to come down, so they go to the top, they trim all the branches, cut the first part, it comes down. They just keep doing this. Well-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... I think my son has seen the entirety of that 30, maybe 40 times, so by extension I've seen it like three times.
- SJSebastian Junger
[laughs] That's awesome.
- PAPeter Attia
He knows-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... every move, meaning wherever you are, he'll tell you, "Okay, that guy, he's gonna take his chainsaw and he's gonna cut this thing at that angle, and then once he gets that branch down he's gonna wrap around this thing, and then he's gonna cut this thing at this angle, and then they're gonna do..." And I mean, it is, it, it is his obsession. He, when he turned five, he wanted a chainsaw for his birthday, and he was so upset that he didn't get it, and I tried to explain to him, like, "Dude, like, you'll kill yourself with this thing." And he's like, "I will not. Like, I know how to use this thing." I mean, he was convinced he knew how to use it 'cause he'd watched so much pine tree removal. So you would literally be his hero.
- SJSebastian Junger
That's awesome. Well, listen, I have a buddy who runs a tree company and he ha- and he had a, he has a, has a girl, she's a teenager now, but she, you know, when she was young, you know, seven, eight years old, whatever, he got her, he set her up on a climbing rig and, uh, you know, a little harness, and he set the ropes up the way climbers use, and she learned how to, like, work her way up a, uh, you know, a rope and, and rappel back down, and it was all, you know, six feet off the ground. It was all, you know, safe. And, uh, you, so you might, if you, if you could find some, an arborist in your town to come sh- you know, rig that up for you, your son would love you forever-
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- SJSebastian Junger
... which I'm sure he will anyway, but he'll love you even twice, twice as much forever. Um-
- PAPeter Attia
Well, the compromise is we got him a Gomboy, you know, one of those big saws, when he was five, and at first I wouldn't let him touch it without me being right there. And then I figured out, like, hey, he actually knows how to use this thing without killing himself, and now he's out there running around in the woods with a saw that's almost as long as him just trimming-
- SJSebastian Junger
Awesome
- PAPeter Attia
... every dread- dead branch. And when people come over and see it, they think we are the worst parents in the world-
- SJSebastian Junger
Right, right
- PAPeter Attia
... because, like, who would let a kid that little use a saw that big? But I mean, I think, you know, that they get a healthy respect for it. He'll, I think he will be using a chainsaw before the age of 16, which was when I told him he could have one.
- SJSebastian Junger
That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, one thing to say about that work, um, I, uh, I mean, I'm scared of heights and I had to kinda control that fear to work that high up in the air.
- PAPeter Attia
Was that part of the appeal? Like, was that, were you doing this to overcome that fear, or was that-
- SJSebastian Junger
No, no, no. No. I was doing it because I could make 500, 1,000 bucks a day back in the early '90s.
- PAPeter Attia
Oh, wow.
- SJSebastian Junger
You know? And, and, uh, yeah. You know, if I contracted my own job and did the climbing and, y- you know, I could make pretty big money, so I could work a couple times a week and then t- the rest of the time I could, I could train, I could write, I could do whatever I wanted. So for, for, you know, for a young man, uh, uh, it was a perfect job for me. And so I, I, you know, I, I, uh, I wouldn't say I'm without my anxieties and fears, but I have a fairly high risk tolerance, and what I r- figured out about tree work was that there are no accidents. It's like there are no accidents in the game of chess. Like, you play poker and you might just draw the wrong card, right? Uh, there are no accidents in chess. If you lose a chess game, it's 'cause you lost the chess game 'cause you made worse moves than the other guy, right? Same thing with tree work. You get hurt-
- 18:58 – 25:35
How Sebastian became a great writer
- PAPeter Attia
talk to me a little bit about this process of becoming a better writer. I mean, it fascinates me to no end because I, I enjoy writing, but I'm obviously not very good at it yet, but I'm getting better, right? Like, I'm better today than I was 10 years ago. And, um, but I, when I look at people who do this for a living, I'm, I'm very interested in what the reps look like, what the feedback process looks like. Is it something that can be done in isolation or is it something that requires an editor or someone who can really sharpen your sword?
- SJSebastian Junger
I mean, it depends. I mean, there are some writers, some very good writers, um, who basically dump out an incredibly rough first draft and they just, in their description, sort of vomit it out, right? And some, there aren't, sentences aren't even complete. There are sections like, "Put this stuff in h- you know, put the, you know, whatever, the sailboat stuff in here," and then they move o- whatever. And it's, it's a very sloppy, fast, sort of intuitive d- brain dump and they can do that for 500 pages and then they go back. That is not me. And people like that often make really good use of an editor who can work through that and kind of see how to begin to shape it. I don't do that, right? I, I write, I'm sort of like a road paver, right?
- PAPeter Attia
Hmm.
- SJSebastian Junger
I mean, I go two miles an hour and I leave behind, like, pretty much finished roadway. Not that editors don't weigh in at the sort of sentence level, like slight, "This is slightly confusing" or, you know, "Maybe you wanna say more about this because I don't quite understand what you're referring to here. Other people might" ... You know, whatever. But I, I, there's very, I, I, I get very little editing from my editors and it's because I'm so obsessive about writing and I go over it and over it and over it and I write very carefully and the stuff that I write is, uh, definitely flawed but not that flawed. And, um, uh, and I, and I have this feeling, like for me, the good writing is a matter of like efficiency, like being, uh, efficient with your words. Like, not quite the minimum possi- so the, the minimum possible words, but something close to that. And, uh, fat creeps into your prose very, very easily, right? And you can really pare it down. Um, it's about m- uh, efficiency and it's about rhythm. The sentences need rhythm. And then it's about saying things in a way that people have never read before. I mean, no one ever needs to h- again to hear someone say the rain drummed on the roof. Like, if you're gonna say the rain drummed on the roof, then just forget about the damn rain and move on to the next interesting thing. No one ever needs to read a sentence they've read before in someone else's writing. And if you really apply that harshly, you will get rid of a lot of what you wrote. I mean, it's amazing how much it's slightly formulaic and you're repeating s- mortars are always slamming into hillsides and blah, blah, blah. You know, just [laughs] like get, get rid of that stuff. And, and so rhythm, efficiency and originality. And if you do that, um, it's gonna be pretty good writing.
- PAPeter Attia
Now do you think journalism and storytelling are, are similar styles? Um, because you tend to do both of these well, right? I mean there's, so much of your work is really telling amazing stories. It's historical, it's anecdotal. And then some of it, of course, is, is much more what we would think of as journalism, you know, reporting on kind of what is happening and trying to provide context around it. Do you think that, I mean first of all I don't think a lot of people do that. Some people do but that's not the, that's not the normal way to do things. Um, does this style lend itself equally to both of those disciplines?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, I mean, uh, you know, I'm, I, I write, uh, long form journalism or long form nonfiction. And, um, so first of all there is no nonfiction category that is liberated from the rules of journalism in terms of quote attribution and, you know, making stuff up [laughs] or whatever. Like, you know, you can't just say, "Oh well it's creative nonfiction so I can, you know, maybe slide by with a little bit of creative..." Like no you can't. Like it's either true or it's not true and you can't blend them because then suddenly everything's gonna be suspect, right? So there's some great books that have, I mean In Cold Blood, Truman Capote's absolute masterpiece. It's a masterful book, right? But by his own admission he like wove in some stuff that he did not, that was not the result of his re- research. Like he, he, he richly imagined some scenes. No problem, right? I mean that's, I mean it's a masterwork but it's important to understand that that actually is not nonfiction and it's not journalism. Uh, and uh, so but just to go on to say that there's a, there's a whole food chain of journalism so you know you get a sort of Reuters or AP report, you know, that's written in minutes or maybe an hour. Um, it basically doesn't have a style. It doesn't have a literary style, right? Y- you, there's a lead paragraph and the follow-up and the, you know whatever. I mean there's a whole formula to how to construct something that's packed with information and completely charmless in a literary sense. Totally charmless but you don't want- ... charming writing when you're reading about, you know, how Harare fell to the rebels, right? I mean, whatever. You just want the information. Then there's more long form journalism where you, you can even use the first person if you want. Spar- I think sparingly, but you're allowed to use the first person. You're allowed to be a little bit more scene setting. You, you can use some novelistic techniques with, which, with content which is completely true and real, right? But the novelistic techniques might be taking a break at an ex- sort of like a, at a compelling moment right before the rebels attack the city, right? You take a break and then you do a thousand words of backstory about the history of Zimbabwe or whatever. And then you f- you know, resume where the action stopped. Like, those are all novelistic techniques that are great for getting people to read nonfiction. It's just that you're making use of factual material, not invented material. And so I'm a long form nonfiction writer, and that extends... You know, for me, a book is long form nonfiction. It's just very long form. So my books, some of my books you can read in a couple of hours, some of my books you can read a couple of days, but basically it's all the same rules and, and creative, um, creative tools of, of, of getting people to read good, good sort of narrative journalism.
- 25:35 – 28:34
Sebastian’s experience with Achilles injuries
- PAPeter Attia
So let's fast-forward. We're into the late '80s now, right? So you've had your, you know, leg injury. By the way, if I recall, it was an Achilles tendon injury, correct?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, yeah. I mean, I was up in a tree. It was an elm tree in Wellington, Massachusetts. It wasn't even that high. And I was in a hurry. I, I hadn't worn my boots that day 'cause I wasn't be- gonna be wearing climbing irons. And, uh, so I just had sneakers on and, uh, and I was cutting something below me quickly one-handed with a little climbing saw, and I, it, it, the tip of the saw hit the tree and it popped into the back of my leg, and it tore open right across the Achilles tendon. It tore open my leg. So I turned the saw off. It didn't hurt at all. I was like, "Something hit my leg. There's nothing else moving down there but the saw. I better check. I just make sure I'm not cut," right? Turned the saw off, clipped it on, looked, and of course my leg was hanging open. And, um, so I, I, I pulled my leg up as close as I could to see if the Achilles was s- was intact or not. I was very concerned about the Achilles. Now, keep in mind, had it been someone else's leg, I mean, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a medic, right? I wouldn't have looked inside their chainsaw wound to see if the Achilles was intact. But you're immediately in shock. You know, there's this sort of psychological remove when you're hurt, and I had no problem pulling the cut open and looking for my Achilles. I had no problem at all, and it seemed to be there. It was about the thickness of a number two pencil and was sort of a whitish color, and I was like, "I don't know. That looks like the Achilles [laughs] looks like it's still there." We're go- So I rappelled down to the bottom of the tree and my crew, you know, helped me, you know, helped me to the car and drove me to the hospital.
- PAPeter Attia
I was gonna ask you. I didn't know if you'd injured it or not, and as a runner, that's a big deal.
- SJSebastian Junger
No, it was-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, it was intact. I did rupture my Achilles in combat, uh, when I was in my mid-40s. When I was in the Korangal Valley in Eastern Afghanistan, we were moving up a hillside under a, a big load and, and, uh, and I felt something slap into the back of my leg. And there was a lot of, you know, long distance sniper activity. You know, like, you don't necessarily heal- hear the bullet that hits you. And I was like, "Oh, no. I got shot. I got shot in the back of the leg. Sh- damn it." And, uh, and I, and I pulled, pulled the pant leg up, and there was no blood. I had no idea what had happened to me, but it was a partial ru- rupture of my Achilles, and I sort of limped on it for a few days and then it kind of healed back together a bit and I was able to continue my embed, which was about another month or so. Um, I, I babied it a little bit, but I, I scraped by and, and e- I got physical therapy eventually and healed it. So but that was, um, apparently the, the malaria medication that they were giving soldiers, Lariam, um, uh, mefloquine I think is the medical name, uh, it, it, it makes people prone to A- Achilles tendon ruptures. Who knew? And we were all on, we were all on Lariam out there.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, and fluoroquinolones, which are a class of antibiotics, ciprofloxacin being the one that probably most people are familiar with, has a similar effect.
- SJSebastian Junger
As does aging. [laughs]
- 28:34 – 38:36
Work as a war reporter and his experience in combat in Afghanistan
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. Um, let's talk a little bit about what, you know, led you to that, right? So when was the moment when you realized that, you know, being a journalist was one thing, but being a journalist who went into the, um, the theater of combat was another, and, and that was the place you wanted to go?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, so I was living in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the storm that I wrote about in The Perfect Storm, uh, hit that town in 1991. I was still limping around from my chainsaw injury, and I was living with my girlfriend, and I'd never lived with a woman before, and, uh, um, the relationship ended and, you know, ended pretty painfully. And, uh, and I- it just s- you know, maybe some sort of weird male reflex or some react- male r- r- reaction to heartbreak. I was like, "All right, I'll show her. I'm gonna go to a war." Like, it was just some bizarre... Like, 'cause there was a civil war in Bosnia, right? And I was like, "All right. We're broken up. I'm gonna go to a war zone and be a, learn to be a war reporter." And, uh, I was looking for a big life change. I was looking for something sort of that felt meaningful and exciting and that would challenge me to, in my mind, sort of like complete the m- the maturation process. I didn't, still didn't quite feel like I was really a man, like I was really mature. Uh, like surely a, a, an ordeal like war will put you over the threshold into adulthood and into manhood, and so off I went. So every other fre- I mean, like 80% of the other freelancer, male freelancers over there had all been dumped by their girlfriend. Like, it seemed to be a sort of common re- reaction for some reason. And, uh, so I started freelance war reporting over there as a radio, uh, correspondent and, uh, I mean freelance, and, uh- And then I wrote my book, The Perfect Storm, and the day, two days after I turned it in, I took a flight to, uh, Delhi, and then on into, uh, uh, Peshawar and on into Afghanistan. It was 1996, and there was a war in Afghanis- a civil war in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out, and I was there as the Taliban were taking over in the summer of 1996, and that was my first, like, official war assignment for a New York, uh, a magazine in New York City. And I, you know, it just was, s- the most meaningful and incredible work I'd ever even imagined, and so I kept doing it.
- PAPeter Attia
What did your dad think when you told him you were going to do this? Was he fully supportive, partially supportive, m- ambivalent?
- SJSebastian Junger
I, you know, my, my dad, h- he was, uh... I think he was proud of me. I think he was also sort of worried. Um, uh, my mom, my mom, I mean, maybe in a kind of classic way, she was like, "Why are you doing this to me?" Like, she, [laughs] she thought my war reporting was directed at her, right? Like, to make her upset. I'm like, "Mom, I'm not doing it to you. I'm just doing it." My father didn't take it that way. I think he was kind of proud and worried. But also, war had completely shaped his, his life and his family's life in Europe, and, and I said, "Look, I'm... War is this, it's a part of human society. It's a part of history. Like, I want to understand what it, what it is, what it's like, how it works, how I'm gonna react in that environment." And, uh, I didn't find all of that out in Bosnia, but it was the beginning of a process.
- PAPeter Attia
Tell me more about Afghanistan. What was that, what was that like, and did you view... Maybe give people a bit of a reminder about who the Taliban were at the time, what the Northern Alliance was, where the-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... mujahideen, what they ultimately became. Uh, m- maybe give people a little bit of a refresher about what happened when the Soviets pulled out in, what was it, about 1990 when they pulled out?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, the, um, the Soviets pulled out in 19- late 1989 after, uh, 10 years. Um, the, their, their sort of proxy government collapsed after a couple of years, a- and it sort of lapsed into civil war that was brought to a stop by the Taliban takeover in, uh, in 1996. The Taliban were a, a regi- religiously inspired, uh, political movement that was basically the, the sort of, um, brainchild of the ISI, the Pakistani Secret Service. Um, it was their way of controlling Afghanistan and turning it in, giving, giving Pakistan what they called a strategic depth in their fight with India. So basically bec- if they controlled Afghanistan, they would always have a fallback position in case India invaded them, which was a threat, uh, which was a possibility, invaded them. They always had a fallback position to, to fight from. Um, and, uh, but the Taliban were, you know, incr- I mean, we all know, right? They had Sharia law. It was incredibly harsh. They were stoning adulterers and not, not letting women go out of the house without a male escort and all kinds of ghastly policies that, you know, frankly, we see in other allies like Saudi Arabia, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone particularly. Um, it's ghastly wherever it is, whether it's a US ally or not. It's all despicable. And, um, I, I eventually wound up in 2000 with, uh, the last quadrant of the country that had not been taken over by the Taliban, was being defended by Ahmad Shah Massoud, a legendary guerrilla fighter against the Soviets, and, uh, he had organized the Tajiks. He was ethnic Tajik. He'd organized the Tajik and some other allied, um, demographics to hold off the Taliban in this one quadrant of, um, of Afghanistan in the, in the northeast. And, uh, so I was with Massoud, um, in the fall of 2000 as, as he fought the Taliban, and this was, like, this was big stuff. I mean, these were tank battles. These were mass infantry assaults into, you know, entrenched positions on ridge tops. You know, it was, like, very, very intense war and extremely traumatic, and, uh, to me at least. And, um, I came back very affected by it psychologically and not even knowing I had PTSD 'cause that term was not being used yet. Um, I just thought I was kinda going crazy, but I got back to New York after those two months, and I was pretty nuts. And, uh, I couldn't take the subway. I couldn't be in a small, crowded space. Like, I, I, I freaked out in a ski gondola. I mean, I just had reactions to things I d- never associated with the combat, but it was clearly a byproduct of the, what I, what I'd experienced. And, um, I got very angry. I had a short, short fuse. I cried a lot. You know, all the classic symptoms. I just didn't recognize them. And at any rate, Massoud was killed two days before 9/11.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, this is, which is, I mean, the, the details of his death are... It's just hard to believe he kind of fell for that trick. I mean, are, were you surprised?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
It just seems like such an-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... such a, such a ploy that was so transparent in a way, but maybe that's only-
- SJSebastian Junger
I mean, the-
- PAPeter Attia
... true in hindsight, I guess.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, I mean, he relied on other people to keep him safe, and people can get paid off and whatever. I mean, you know, uh, I don't know the details of that. But yes, it was a m- it was a movie camera filled with explosives, and there were two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers that were posing as journalists, and they asked to interview him, and they blew themselves up. One actually survived the blast and tried to run away, and he was gunned down. Um, there was another young man who was a translator who was in the room, uh, Fahim Dashti, very, very brave young man who, um, uh, w- worked in a film office that Massoud set up to, to docu- v- to document his efforts against the Taliban and against Al-Qaeda and in my father, as my father would, would have put it, against fascism. And, uh, the Taliban, uh, caught him, uh, last week in the Panjshir Valley north of Afghan- uh, north of Kabul. Uh, and executed him for his work with Massoud. Um, there were four men in that office
- PAPeter Attia
20 years later, words
- SJSebastian Junger
... 20 years later, there were four men in that film office working for Massoud documenting the war against the Taliban, and they caught Fahim, um, Fahim Dashti, and executed him just a week ago. Tragic. A very, very brave, very, very brave man. Um, so at any rate, uh, uh, after, after he was executed, 9/11... A- after Massoud was killed, uh, two days later, 9/11 happens, clearly part of the same strategic thinking by Al-Qaeda. And, uh, and as soon as I could, I rushed back to Afghanistan through Dushanbe in Tajikistan and joined the commanders I'd been with the year before. Uh, and I was sleeping on a, you know, in my clothes on a front line for a, for a month straight until the American bombers had done their, done their work, and then the Northern Alliance... I mean, I never saw an American soldier. You know, there are a few SF guys, Special Forces guys out there, but it was all Northern Alliance foot soldiers. They broke through the Taliban front lines on November 13th, I think it was, 2001, and we followed them, uh, in the back of a pickup truck. And, uh, we port... We, we walked into Kabul the following morning, passed a pile of dead bodies. Um, and, uh, and walked into Kabul, and the, the jubilation by the populace that, uh, being liberated from the Taliban was indescribable. When people found out I was American, they would come up and hug me for what our country did to liberate them from, from the Taliban. Extraordinary moment for me as a person. And, uh, but we had, we were so filthy, we smelled so bad after our month sleeping in the front lines, uh, that we tried to get a taxi. You know, there's taxis and whatever in Kabul, like, they, you know, and, and we tried to get a taxi and the, the driver would not take us. He said, "You guys smell too, too ba- too, too awful for my taxi. You're gonna have to..." So we, I think we walked across Kabul and found a place like a hotel where we could, um, you know, where we could stay in the sort of chaotic first moments of liberation.
- PAPeter Attia
I wanna go back a little bit to kind of the, the, the precursor or, or really what, what caused this first bout of PTSD. Um,
- 38:36 – 52:25
Psychological effects of war and Sebastian’s own experience with PTSD
- PAPeter Attia
'cause again, I'm still kind of... You know, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen your, your documentaries, so I, I kind of have a sense of what this is like, but, uh, I'm assuming there are some people listening to this who haven't. But when you're reporting in a war, it's, it's very different than if, say, you know, you're a Wall Street reporter and your job is to cover this sector, this, this banking sector, or, uh, you're covering this beat on sports. Like, y- y- you know, there's a distance between you and your subjects in most other forms of reporting that I think can't really exist in a war, if for no other reason than you are literally physically with your subjects.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Uh, so let's just put the danger aside for a moment. The fact that you're kind of embedded with your, your subject matter, um, is... Am I missing an example? Is there another example of where that's also common in journalism?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, let me s- let me just say that you, y- you, you can have an emotional connection to anybody, right? So, and-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, yeah. I'm saying this is physical though, right? Like, you're, you're cohabitated with, you're dependent on. Let, let's even be more specific, right? You, you, y- you know, you, you, you, you presumably are, they're helping you, they're keeping you safe, right?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, there's two issues. One is emotional connection, which you can have with anybody, frontline nurses or p- cops or sanitation workers or teachers or whatever.
- PAPeter Attia
Yep.
- SJSebastian Junger
You can emotionally connect to people and be affected by their emotional reality because you're starting to share it and invest in them and become empathic to them, sensitized to their issues, and it's a very powerful experience, right? Um, in addition, in, in a war, um, if you're anywhere near the front line, you're exposed to risk, and you're exposed to, um, not that you aren't in other places, but you're exposed to human suffering, right? And human suffering is incredibly traumatic to behold, right? And, um, particularly if you yourself feel removed from it. So one of the most, one of the hardest things that ever happened to me psychologically was I was in Liberia during the Civil War, and a mortar round landed in a crowded, um, field of refugees who had fled the fighting and crammed into Monrovia. And, you know, I was, I was sort of in hiding. The government thought I was a spy. The mon- the Liberian government thought, accused me of being a spy, and I was sort of in hiding, so I was having my own, like, terrifying thing go on, right? Um, uh, because I thought they might torture or kill me if they caught me, so I was having my own issues. But in addition, this field full of people, men, women, children, I mean, a mortar landed right in the middle of them and quill- killed a 27 people, a lot of them children, right? And they brought the bodies and piled them in front of the, uh, the... And I was out. When the mortar hit, I was out. I mean, I hit the ground. I was very clo- very, very close, and I hit the ground, right? I mean, we... It was a bad situation. And, um, sometime later, um, they, they piled the bodies up in front of the US Embassy as a protest that America was not invading... They wanted America to invade Liberia and stop the war, right? That was what the populace wanted. That's what the civilians wanted, right? And they piled these bodies up in front of the, um, embassy, and I had to walk past, I walked past them on my way into the embassy to, 'cause I was trying to get evacuated 'cause I was in so much danger, and I stopped, and my mind just went blank And there was children, there was a, you know, I mean, it's hard even now for me to talk about it, and it was almost 20 years ago. And, um, I, I, I went into shock, and I didn't know what to do, and, and I started counting them. And I thought, uh, someone needs to know what this number is. It was 27. So later, the trauma to me was that I'd had no emotional reaction to such a horror. I mean, I, I was completely in shock, and I had no... It, it, it, it was a completely abstract thing, right? I had to. It was a psychological defense. And that psychological defense finally broke down a week or two later when I finally got out to Paris and got to safety. And I was sitting in a cafe waiting for my girlfriend who was joining me in Paris. I had a couple of days to kill. I was sitting in a cafe smoking a cigarette, and I saw some, two men carrying a, a, a mattress across the street, and it sort of sagged in exactly the same way that a body does. And I just went into a full-blown panic attack 'cause I s- I knew I was looking at a mattress. My body react, my, my, the rest of my mind reacted to body, dead body. I'm in a war zone. I completely panicked. And, you know, I still have trouble talking about that without crying. I mean, I still have to, even now, sort of choke back the sort of emotions, and that was almost 20 years ago. So human suffering, and that was what happened when I came back from Afghanistan. I saw an enormous amount of human suffering and of a, of a particularly bloody, gruesome, visually bloody, and gruesome sort. And I came back altered. And I also, you know, we got shelled very, very badly by the Taliban. You know, there was nothing we can do about it. We just basically got spanked by Katyusha rockets for an hour. I mean, it killed our horse. Our pack horse got killed 'cause the horse couldn't get down like we were. We survived that, but, you know, all that was enormously traumatizing. And, and now the danger stuff that I've been through is easy to process. It's no problem. It's the suffering, it's the dismemberment that you see, particularly with children, that you see that you, never goes away. And, and, uh, I still have to be careful talking about it because I will get choked up. And then, you know, then it's a pr- that's a process that I can't stop once it starts.
- PAPeter Attia
Did you ever read the book, um, one, I think it's called One Bullet Away by Nate Fick, Nathan Fick?
- SJSebastian Junger
No, I've heard of it. I haven't read it.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, it's a great book. He was a Marine, um, and he wrote about his, his, his tours in, I believe it was mostly Iraq. I can't recall if he was also in Afghanistan. Um, but one of the things that I remember being very keen to as, as kind of a, a subtext of this was we focus a lot on mortality in, in, in combat. You know, the number of people who have died. But there are lots of people who don't die who are forever scarred. And I mean physically. Let's, emotional is, that's, we have a lot of attention being paid to that fortunately. But, you know, I thought back to my experiences in, uh, in, in surgical training, um, which was at a really, really busy trauma center in Baltimore. So you're, you're really, you're, you know, arguably one of the most violent cities in, in, in the United States. And lots of patients died, right? So sometimes they would arrive dead. Um, they were, you know, when the paramedics got to them, they were alive. By the time they got to the hospital, they were dead. Others would arrive alive but never made it out of the trauma bay, or they would die in the operating room, or they would die a few days later as a complication of too much blood loss or sepsis or something like that. But there were a lot of people who didn't die, who did leave the hospital, but their lives would never be the same again, right? They, you know, transpelvic gunshot wound, which is normally fatal, by the way. A transpelvic gunshot wound is almost a universally fatal injury because of the vascular, the vasculature in there and how difficult it is to get that bleeding under control. So sometimes the best victory you can have in that type of a gunshot wound is to sacrifice a limb. You know, you'll, you'll, you'll have to ligate the femoral artery and vein, which means you'll lose that leg, but you'll save the life. And you think, well, that person's not the same. A- and I, I just remember reading Nate's book and thinking how many of these Marines lived, but we kind of forget their story of how injured they are going forward. It, it's almost like that's what you're talking about, right? It's like it's that suffering in these other folks who then live and they're, they are to themselves and others a reminder of this trauma. And, and again, that's just the physical side of it. The psychological piece, a- a- again, I-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... could be potentially worse. I'm not sure.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. Um, you know, there's a, a very moving command at some military events, uh, with older veterans. And, um, and the command is, you know, to stand, to stand for the, for the flag or whatever it may be. And the command is stand as you are able, acknowledging that some people would like to be able to stand and can't, and shouldn't, shouldn't feel ashamed of their, of their inability to stand. Stand as you are able. Uh, very, very dignified, moving acknowledgement of the cost of war.
- PAPeter Attia
Between Bosnia and when you're trying to get evacuated from the American Embassy is probably a dozen years. Were you, during that period of time, aware of what was PTSD in you, or were you still sitting there in that cafe in Paris unclear as to why you were having this reaction?
- SJSebastian Junger
Oh, God, I had no idea at wh- why I was having that reaction. It was exactly 10 years, '93 in Bosnia, 2003 Liberia. Uh, I'd been in a bunch of wars in between, you know, in between those. But, um, no, I had no idea. Um- I, you know, I spent 15 minutes thinking I was gonna be executed by rebels in Sierra Leone. Uh, I mean, uh, well, some bad things happened, you know? And, and they always had an e- a- an effect on me, and I always just thought, "Oh, I, I'm just losing it. What's wrong with me?" You know? And I, uh, the c- the nation was not talking about PTSD, and I didn't know anything about it. And, you know, some of the reactions are relat- are ... I mean, there were no ski gondolas in Afghanistan, right? It was, why, so why would I relate panicking in a ski gondola to combat in Afghanistan? I wouldn't. I just thought I was going nuts. And, you know, finally I was at a, I was at a party and, and the, and the wife of a older friend of mine, older woman, uh, was a psychiatrist. She was asking me sort of out of sort of curiosity, you know, this was right after we'd invaded Iraq and, uh, so around '03, around the same time. And she said, "Have you, all this combat you've covered, have you ever had any, you know, psychological consequences?" And I was like, "No, I don't think so. Uh, um, no, not really. I'm good." Um, and then I was like, "I mean, I did start to have panic attacks once in a while, but I don't think it had anything to do with combat. I mean, they're just, you know, I don't know." And she, [laughs] she was like, "You know, you'll find that that probably was connected to combat. And, um, there's something called PTSD." And, you know, keep in mind this is early on in the Iraq War, right, when we're having this conversation. She said, "I think America is gonna be hearing a lot more about PTSD in the coming years. But you might wanna look into it because actually I think you're having, you're suffering more consequences than you realize." She was absolutely right.
- PAPeter Attia
How did you receive that at that point in time?
- SJSebastian Junger
Oh, I was enormously relieved, right?
- PAPeter Attia
Mm.
- SJSebastian Junger
I was like, "Oh, this is a normal reaction? Like, the kind of freak show I can produce in a subway platform in New York City isn't just my unique and pathetic weakness a- and neurosis? This is actually a normal, healthy reaction to trauma?" Uh, and you know, what, what would happen is that the traumatic reaction would dissipate over time, you know? It would be the strongest when I got back or within a week or two of getting back, and then it would dissipate and dissipate, and after, you know, it's a- you know, it's like a year later, I don't care how br- heartbroken you are that your girlfriend broke up with you, a year later, you know, you're pretty good. You know what I mean? I mean, you can sort of think about it and have some thoughts, but, but, you know, basically it's not invading your daily experience like it might a week later, right? And likewise with PTSD, you know, for, for, you know, I think the statistic is about 80% of people a year out from the trauma, they, uh, 80% have fully recovered and regained a, a, a normal, functioning, healthy life. Which doesn't mean they're not changed by it, right? You can be changed by something but not in a, a psychologically dysfunctional state. And, um, you know, you're always gonna, you know, the, the grieve your p- your, your mom's death or your, the divorce or whatever it may be. You can alw- you know, you may always grieve that. That doesn't mean that you have a psychological issue.
- PAPeter Attia
W- what was the reaction of others? Um, it sounds like at least you had one girlfriend during this period of time who was probably witness to some of this. W- or were you shield, or were you somehow able to sort of shield these anxiety attacks and, and panic attacks from others?
- SJSebastian Junger
Oh, I, I, I was, you know, I w- I mean, my, the panic was going on internally. I mean, I was literally white-knuckling it and pouring sweat, right? And, um, I would al- I was, I would conceal it as much as I possibly could, and I think I was successful, um, uh, from anyone around me. And, um, I mean, I never told anybody about it.
- PAPeter Attia
Hmm.
- SJSebastian Junger
Until later. But not, you know, not immediately afterwards or ... No, I, I, uh, I, I, it wasn't something I wanted to share.
- 52:25 – 1:05:05
The sacred bond of soldiers and what Sebastian learned from his time with troops in Afghanistan
- PAPeter Attia
So the war in Iraq starts in March of '03. When are you next back in combat?
- SJSebastian Junger
So I went, uh, yeah, I refused to cover Iraq. I thought it was a mistake and a travesty and had, that it had nothing to do with 9/11, and I didn't wanna get killed covering a mistake, and I didn't think I could be unbiased in my reporting, so I didn't cover Iraq. Um, but by 2005, the war in Afghanistan, which was an easy win in- initially, uh, because it was so underfunded, undermanned, um, no one was focusing on it because of Iraq, it didn't go that well. And what was an easy win and, and we had the gratitude of, of the majority of Af- uh, you know, the strong majority of Afghan citizens, we did not follow through. And so by '05, the Taliban insurgency had started to, like, it, the s- you know, the tires have started to grip. Now, they're not just spinning their wheels. They're actually starting to get some traction, and the Americans are starting to really take some casualties. And I think they were losing a soldier every three days in 2005, and they were starting to get into some pretty good firefights. And, uh, I was like, "Damn, that's, who saw that coming?" Right? It was so, it looked like it was such a successful, '01 looked so successful. Um, so I thought, "I wanna know what it's like to be an American soldier in combat." You know, having grown up in Vietnam, it never occurred to me that I would, that that would interest me journalistically. And it never occurred to me that the US military would allow unfettered access of the sort that I might find interesting. I mean, I don't wanna just go to press conferences and have some, you know, public relations major tell me, you know, give me some spin about what's going on. [laughs] Like, that doesn't interest me, right? So but it really looked like, uh, George Bush sort of made good on his promise to provide full access to American journalists or, or journalists of any country on the front lines with American soldiers. I was like, "All right, I'm in. I wanna see how this, what this is like." And, um, so I was in Zabul Province with the 2nd of the 503rd, the same unit I profiled later in Afghanistan, um, Battle Company. And, uh, you know, we were in a- You know, uh, you know, minutes after stepping out of a Black Hawk, getting dep- you know, delivered to a unit that was in the field doing a combat operation, minutes after stepping out of the Black Hawk, I was in a pretty good firefight. I mean, an RPG almost hit me. You know, I mean, boom, all of a sudden I'm in combat with American soldiers. And, uh, you know, I just couldn't believe the intensity of the fight and the quality of the soldiers. Like, these guys, it was all men in this unit, I mean, these guys were working so hard, right, physically. I mean, the mortar teams were carrying 160 pounds, 1-6-0, 160 pounds on, you know, overnight combat patrol movements, you know, dusk to dawn, without, with basically carrying their own body weight on their back, right? I mean, un- unbelievable. They were working way harder at this to repil- to rebuild this other country than anyone I knew ever worked in college. Any of my buddies in college, they, they never worked this hard at anything, you know? And I was just feel, I really liked those guys, and, uh, and I was like, "I want more of this." Like, if this unit goes back to Afghanistan in two years, it was a two-year cycle of deployments, if they go back to Afghanistan, man, I'm gonna c- follow them for a year and see what it's ... uh, just document one platoon in one place for one year, and document that with a video camera and, and by writing a book. My book became War, the book War, and the, the, the documentary that I made with my friend and brother, Tim Hetherington, uh, was called Restrepo.
- PAPeter Attia
What did you learn about those guys in terms of their motivation? Um, how many of them saw this as a duty, um, a direct response to what happened on 9/11, um, in the way that I suspect many young men saw what happened on December 7th, 1941, as their moral obligation to go and do something about it? Uh, versus how many of them would you infer were looking for a sense of purpose as the primary objective for which this became a vehicle to, to, to do it? I, I don't know if my question makes sense, right?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
One is, like, purely in response to 9/11, "I hate that I have to do this. I don't wanna do this, but I see no higher calling," versus, "I need to find this sense of purpose."
- SJSebastian Junger
I mean, none of the guys I knew joined the, joined the military despite hating it. Like, they, uh, they, I mean, uh, I mean, they may have, may well have joined up out of a fe- a sense of patriotic duty after 9/11, absolutely, but I think a lot of those people were from families that had a military history, that probably had male relatives that served in one war or another, uh, I mean, pri- prior generations. Um, a lot of them, honestly, were young men that were just, wanted to test themselves in combat, you know? I mean, you can join the military and not be in a combat unit, right? They d- the combat units do not want people that don't wanna be in combat units. There, there are enough young men that are quite psyched to experience combat, in fact, very driven to experience combat, worried that the war's gonna be over before they get to experience combat. There's enough young men like that, that, um, you can fill those frontline combat units with entirely enthusiastic soldiers. And, um, you know, if, if, you know, if anything, it's sometimes hard to get those guys to give it up, uh, to give combat up, and I think that was probably true in Vietnam as well. Uh, uh, I've read letters from American Civil War soldiers and Worl- soldiers in World War I talking about how the war was the, some of the best days of their lives, you know, veterans of these, World War I and the Civil War. I mean, bloodbaths, right? You know, letters saying, "Those, those were some of the most meaningful days of our lives, and we miss it," right? So, and the, you know, the casualty rates were horrific. You know, now the casualty rates are a lot less, and the, a lot of the guys that I knew, uh, out there really fa- really missed that experience of combat. And I just read in, in the Washington Post that the Taliban fighters [laughs] now sort of have nothing to do 'cause they won the war, and that they are openly saying that they miss the fighting, like, that they, they, they, they, they're already nostalgic for the war that they fought. And, um, so, you know, you get people like that, you get men like that, um, they're out there, they, maybe they joined after 9/11 because of, you know, patriotism or a history of, family history of service, um, but I would say m- the, the majority of them were, like, pretty psyched to see themselves as, "Yeah, man, I was in combat. I saw the real thing, and I did okay." You know, like, a lot of them were like that.
- PAPeter Attia
And how much of that do you think is the desire to, to prove themselves in, in the, in the theater of combat versus the sense of connection that must come from that, uh ... I have a number of friends who are formal, former Special Forces guys, and certainly one of the things they talk about is the trust you must have in your other soldiers, right? It's, it's, it's sorta one thing if you're working in an office building and you say to your colleague, "Hey, uh, would you mind tracking this thing down for me 'cause I, I, you know, I need that piece of information a- and you're closer to it. Can you grab it for me?" And, and you gotta trust that they're gonna pull it together for you by next day when you need it. It's quite another thing when you're in combat and you ask someone to do something where, you know, literally somebody's life is on the line. Which is not to say that everything you ask is of that gravity, but enough things are. I've never experienced that, right? Like, I've never had to ask somebody to do thing, to do something where my life depends on it, and nor have I been asked to do something where someone else's life depends on it. Outside of medicine, I guess I'll carve out, you know, trying to help a person who's been injured. So I have to imagine that that's, that sense of purpose, that sense of fulfillment that comes from both leaning on somebody and being leaned on is e- is exceptional. Do you think that ultimately that is the thing that hooks people?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. I mean, I think we are w- humans are wired to respond positively to behaviors and traits that are, were adaptive in our evolutionary past. And clearly, if people that go through danger together are loyal to each other in facing that danger, and consider that that group that's faced and survived danger together has a special unique bond, and that thing makes us us, right? That describes human groups since the dawn of time, right? Humans lived in groups of 30, 40, 50 people, typically in the, you know, 90% of our evolutionary past. And that loyalty to others who are loyal to you in the face of an a- you know, a, a- an attacking lion or another human group that's, you know, coming to kill you, like, that reaction is completely ada- is very, very adaptive. And adaptive things feel good. The things that keep us alive and allow us to procreate and survive, they feel good, and that's why we do them, and that's how evolution works. And so that group bond, that mutual group bonds, is completely intoxicating. And y- you have not experienced that, but you are hardwired to be receptive to it, even at the sort of neurochemical level of dopamine and oxytocin. Like, you are hardwired to be receptive to it and to grow to want it and to need it. And it would take you some hours in a dangerous situation with some other people to pretty quickly start thinking, "These are my people. You know, we survived the plane crash together. I'm alive 'cause of them, and I pulled this other guy out of the water, and it's gonna be days till we're rescued, and this is now our tribe." And you are ... You know, it happens in prisons, and it happens in all kinds of situations. Like, that's what humans are, and it's an extraordinary thing and, and other animals don't quite have it in the same social way that, that humans do. Um, one of the profound things about humans is that humans are will, will be willing to die for a same-sex peer that they're not related to. Um, and I'm not gonna talk about women 'cause I'm not a woman and I haven't studied it, b- so I'll restrict my conversation to men. A man will die for a same-sex peer that he's not related to. Not his cousin, not his brother, just another dude who happens to be in the platoon. And that arrangement where they each ... They might not even like each other. I mean, as this one guy in the platoon I was with said to me in '07, '08, when I was in the Korengal Valley, Brendan O'Byrne, who's still a good friend of mine, he was like, "You know, it's funny. There are guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other, but we would all die for each other." Now, if you're in a group that has that arrangement with each other, it's not even dependent on feelings, that's a very secure place to be as a young man, as a human being. And, um, there are a lot of groups that function that way. Uh, you know, I know some, I know some guys in the FDNY that f- the fire department in New York City completely functions like that. Um, the willingness to overlook your own safety and your own, own concerns for the sake of the group, um, is, the people that are in that position, you know, strangely, they don't feel like it's an onerous responsibility or obligation. They feel that it's a privilege and that they're honored to be in that role, that they're, they're special. They are special. And I interviewed a fireman in the late '90s, a, a, a sort of storied fireman named Pat Brown. I mean, anyone in the FDNY would know that name. And, you know, he went into the World Trade Centers on 9/11, uh, and his last call was from a, um, you know, a, an emergency phone at the 30th floor of one of the Trade Centers saying, "It's Pat Brown. We're on the 30th floor and, and, and we're gonna keep moving. There's casualties coming down, and we're gonna keep moving upwards." And he led his men upwards until the buildings collapsed. And the ability for humans to do that for each other is a profound thing, and it's what makes human society possible.
- 1:05:05 – 1:14:46
An evolutionary perspective on the forces that unify and bind tribes
- PAPeter Attia
So, so there's two things that I wanna understand a bit better, Sebastian. W- Actually, several, but let's go back to the beginning. 10,000 years ago, you and I might've been in a group of 30 or 40, as you said. It's really under s- I, I understand very clearly why the 30 or 40 of us would've been inseparable and even put aside personal differences because we actually needed each other to survive. Like, there's no one human that could have survived 10,000 years ago in isolation, right? You couldn't have got enough food, provided enough shelter-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... and, and, and provided enough security from animals and other humans. So, so we take that off the table and we realize there's some minimum effective group size that was necessary just to survive, and anybody who tried to deviate from that wasn't going to. N- Now let's use the example which is, well, that can be scaled somewhat, um, and you look at firefighters. So I am very close to a firefighter who, uh, was a, was a fire chief in San Jose, um, was devastated in a way that I think many people wouldn't have been during 9/11 because he understood very clearly that his brothers died. That's the, that's the language he used. His brothers died on 9/11, and we were actually talking about this recently because of the 20th anniversary, and he said he has no doubt that had he been there that day, he would have died. Like, that's not something that he thinks, "Oh, I wonder what I would have done." No, he knows what he would have done.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right. Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
So that's an, that's a very interesting bond to me because It scales what we just talked about at the 30 to 40 people level. His, his tribe is much bigger than 30 to 40 people.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
Now you go one step further, which is the story of Pat Brown, which is his tribe now includes a whole bunch of people who were not firefighters. He wasn't going from the 30th floor up to get firefighters out. He was going to get civilians out. And you can say, "Well, okay, that was his job," but, I mean, that kind of strikes me as a bullshit answer, right? I mean, I don't think he was just doing it because it was his job. He was doing it because he felt some higher duty, some higher calling. So now his tribe was even larger than just all the firefighters. It was all of the people that were in danger. All of this suggests that this connectedness can scale beyond a, a group of 30 to 40 people. Do you, do you agree with that?
- SJSebastian Junger
I, I, I do to an extent. I mean, I would say that your fireman friends, you know, we were all, Americans were virtually all morally, emotionally wounded on 9/11, and these were American firefighters that died, and you were talking to an American firefighter. Um, it's possible that an, if an equivalent story, you know, happened in Germany or Zimbabwe or Pakistan, he might not quite have grieved his Pakistani brothers who had died in a building collapse in, in Lahore. I mean, I don't, I... You know what I mean?
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- SJSebastian Junger
Like, the... So, you know, partly-
- PAPeter Attia
So you're saying it might have been more the American connection than the occupational connection.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. I mean, yeah, th- those are my brothers, and they're my brothers partly because we share the same country, and this country was attacked. And, you know, I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's layers, there's just different layers of affiliation, and we definitely... You know, humans have a kind of symbolic, a, a capacity for symbolism where, okay, I may not know you, but you're wearing the same insignia, you're wearing the same uniform, you're doing the same job I do. I can relate to you. Like, I got you. Yeah, we may not know each other, I may not love you like a brother, but I respect you, and, uh, you know, I might risk my life for you. You know, and, you know, one of the things... I mean, if you're gonna become a firefighter, one of the sources of pride is that you take care of a, a vulnerable population. That's what you are, right? You're a sheepdog. I mean, you, you know, that's... And, and so Pat Brown went up those, you know, went up those stairs with his, with his, with his brothers, right? Because that's what they do, and they were doing it together, and that's, the, it wasn't even, didn't even come up for review, "Oh, should we do this or not?" Like, if you're gonna review that, you're not gonna be in the fire department. Like, just get out now. They all know that. I'm sure there are people that actually, they're like, "Oh, you know what? I just found out I'm not a firefighter today. I'm actually not a firefighter. I'm gonna get out of here." And the fire department doesn't want you in there either, right? I mean, they didn't want anyone in, uh, 2nd Platoon Battle Company in the Korengal Valley, like, they didn't wa- you know, on some level didn't wanna be there. Like, they don't, "No, we don't need you. You don't need us." Like, "We'll put you somewhere else where you're not a danger to yourself and others." And, um, so you have to understand that sacrifice is part of a way that Pat Brown probably saw himself. Uh, his, uh, his, his, the meaning of his existence to some degree came from his role as a fireman, so of course he went up the damn stairs, you know? And, uh, that's what a fireman does. And, um, but so, so, I, I mean, but I understand where your question is leading is like, is it possible to feel affiliated with 300 million people? Like, do, can we feel affiliated as a nation, um, even if we don't know each other? And, yes, because humans are capable of symbolic thought. Um, and, and, uh, and we're capable of understanding intellectually, oh, we're all Americans. Like, I, I might, you, you and I might be different races. You may, maybe you don't even speak English. You know, maybe, whatever. You could have enormous differences between individuals, but there's some concept. When my father came to these shores and arrived in Baltimore off a Portuguese freighter transporting cork from Lisbon called the São Tomé, and they landed in, in Baltimore, and he stepped ashore, and the immigration official welcomed him. He looked around him, and he knew he was in a country like no other. It was filled with every race and language of the world, and he quickly discovered that. And that's humans' ability for abstract thought. Um, of course, it's not that hard to cleave that either, um, as we've been seeing in the last few years. But yeah, it's an extraordinary thing.
- PAPeter Attia
Where do you think that was at its peak in American history? World War II? The, the sense of unity, that is. That sense of when were we most a tribe in the abstract sense and at the largest scale?
- SJSebastian Junger
After 9/11, for sure. Um, I think World War II. Uh, you know, there was curfew in New York that was enforced. There was a huge sort of can and metal collecting operation 'cause the, the armed forces needed metal, aluminum. I can't remember what, but you know, there was a whole drive to collect cans. I mean, there was, like, a huge amount of sort of national undertaking that everyone understood, stood, we're in this together. You know, buy war bonds, all that stuff. Um, the Depression was another time. Um, I mean, I knew, I knew a man, he's passed away, but he, who, who was young during the, during the, the Dust Bowl and the, and the Great Depression out in, um, uh, Missouri. And, uh, he said that the, uh, that the schoolhouses would left, would be left open at night. You know, these are one-room schoolhouses, right? This is the 1930s in the American West and Midwest. Uh, that the schoolhouses would be left open, unlocked, because migrant families, you know, people were on the move with children. And, you know, they were poor. They were destitute. They were desperate. They were looking for work in the Dust Bowl, and they would be, you know, driving horse and cart across the lands. And they needed places to sleep with their children, and so every town left their schoolhouse open so that these migrants could enter with their children and sleep in a safe, protected place, and they would leave before class started in the morning. And they, every school had a well, so they would have water for the, water for the horses. You know, and that's the kind of communalism that, um, typifies a, a, a nation that's enduring a great hardship. And the, and the sort of looking out for one's neighbors and looking out for people that are less well off than you are. You know, the Blitz in London had plenty of that as well. People react very, very, very, very, in very healthy ways to that kind of stress. I, I, I researched a, a ... in my book Tribe, I researched an earthquake in, in Italy in 1916, if I remember correctly, in Avezzano, the area of Avezzano. And one guy, they, you know, they had a 90-something percent mortality rate. I mean, basically it was like a, a nuke, a nuclear bomb had gone off in that area, and 90-something percent of the people died within minutes. And, uh, one of the survivors wrote that the pe- the people who were left, um, there was a complete egalitarianism among the, among the survivals, survivors. Didn't matter if you were a criminal or you were rich or you were poor or an outcast or ... Did not matter what you were, the people that were still alive regarded each other as equals because they, it was a matter of survival. And, and this guy said, as soon as in, like, outside relief got there, that that egalitarianism, uh, ended. And he said that the, the crisis that the earthquake had given them, briefly given them, uh, what the, what, what the law promises but cannot in fact deliver, which is the equality of all people. Well, if you experience that, you do not wanna give it up, and that's one of the things that soldiers experience in combat with each other in a platoon.
- 1:14:46 – 1:20:19
Hunter-gatherer societies, dealing with loss, and the ancestral connection to the spiritual realm
- PAPeter Attia
When we think back to our ancestors, again, even just 10,000 years ago, did they live in that state because it was effectively a crisis 24/7?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, it wasn't necessarily a crisis, but they were subsistence level Stone Age people that needed everyone to contribute to survive. And, um, I'm sure the crises were regular enough that it keep them sort of bonded together. But look, if you're a hunter-gatherer society, you know, there's no getting off the treadmill. You got, you know, you gotta keep, you gotta keep that system going pretty much continually. Now, they've done studies of even in very harsh environments like the Kalahari Desert, [coughs] the native people of that area, uh, the !Kung, their, um, for example, um, that they worked an average of four hours a day to survive in one of the harshest environments of the world, right? The average person in industrial society, post-industrial society works, you know, an eight-hour day, a 40-hour workweek. You know, so it's interesting, as we've gotten more advanced, the time requirements for survival have increased, not decreased. Um, but at that level, it does not require full-time effort to, effort to survive, but it does require full-time cooperation, collaboration within the groups.
- PAPeter Attia
Do we have any sense of how hunter-gatherers, um, treated death or how they, how they, how they responded to loss?
- SJSebastian Junger
I mean, I'm just going from a very kind of general knowledge right now. I haven't made a study of it. Um, there was very little suicide and depression in, in hunter-gatherer societies. Uh, suicide was virtually unheard of. Um, uh, so the deaths that happened were, um, uh, you know, either violent as a result of warfare or dangerous animals or, um, you know, infant losses from disease. But if you, if, if you lived through the initial high-risk years, a lot of people in those societies lived until into their 70s and 80s, you know, l- a long lifespan in Western terms, uh, uh, even by today's standards. And, um, I think there's a general feeling that the person had passed on to a realm in which inhabited by other dead people, other dead ancestors, um, and that you'll be joining them soon enough. I mean, I, a- and, uh, that one of the ro- jobs of the shamans, you know, shamanism is a virtually universal human behavior in almost every human society. Um, one of the jobs of the shaman is to shuttle back and forth between that world and the world of the living, you know, with important information about how, you know, how it's going over there and what we need to do, we as living people need to do to remain in a right and proper relationship with the dead.
- PAPeter Attia
Y- yeah, I mean, that, that's interesting, right? Because it, it, it suggests that the impact of loss was so significant that we needed a way to explain it and we needed a way to, to, to give meaning to life, which was in part saying that even when you're gone it still matters and you mattered and you've, y- you might be reincarnated, depending on whatever the belief system was that emerged from that. Um, you know, I was just recently on an elk hunt and, I mean, I love hunting, but it's, it's, it's really, it's, it's, it's never lost on me when you kill an animal that that animal lived. You know, in the case of an elk, that animal was alive for eight or nine years before you killed it, right? And again, I won't get into all the benefits of it and why a certain number of animals, uh, y- you're benefiting the herd by removing a select number of them, et cetera. But I remember when I shot my elk, uh, the, the, just, just last, you know, last week- I, I remember thinking, so first of all, as, as I watched him die, all of the other elk made a circle around him as he bedded down to die. Now, that blew my mind because, um, I hadn't seen that before. A lot of times when the arrow hits the elk, he makes noises, they freak out, everybody scatters. But for whatever reason on this occasion, the arrow hit him, he wandered very, very m- 40 yards. He bedded down, was making noises like he was dying, and he was surrounded by the other elk, and eventually they went away when he died. And you can't help but sort of anthropomorphize that [chuckles] and sort of project your own thinking, like, what were they thinking? Like, this guy, he was the biggest of them, and they just watched him die. Do they understand what that means? And will they remember that? Will they remember that next week? Or will they ... It, it's a silly question because it can't be answered, but, or at least I don't think it can be answered. Maybe it has been studied. But, um, it certainly makes me wonder how other species experience loss.
- 1:20:19 – 1:29:08
Psychological mechanisms that protect humans from painful experiences and the power in giving thanks
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, here, I mean, here's just a thought that's not a direct answer to that question, but it's, I think it, it's an interesting avenue to go down. So there are a lot of psychological ... Humans have psychological mechanisms to protect themselves from painful experiences, right? They go into shock physically if they're in physical pain. Uh, in war, there's two different ways of, of processing the fact that you're killing other human beings. At the end of the day, everyone knows that that's wrong, and, uh, there's a, there's a moral burden that comes with it. And one way to do it is to convince yourself that they're not fully human. You're not really killing humans, right? It's the enemy. They're less than human. It doesn't matter, right? That's a very common one. Um, and it's easy to feel that way when they're killing your friends, and you're filled with rage and grief, and you're like, okay, you know, pick your, you know, pick your, pick your insult. You know, you, you cockroaches, you, you know, whatever, you, you rats, you know. Like, they, they use, they resort to animal, you know, animals to, to refer to the enemy, to dehumanize them. But the other thing you can do is to accord a kind of respect. Like, you're a worthy foe, and the Greeks did this with the Trojans. You're a worthy foe. Now, we are gonna wipe you out, make no mistake about it, but you're a, you're a worthy enemy, and we respect you. Uh, we respect how hard you are fighting. You are brave. We're still gonna kill you, but we have respect for you. That's another way of psychologically distancing from the fact that you're killing people, right, and they're trying to kill you. So there is a moral burden, uh, often in hunting because you're killing this animal. And sort of native, native, many native peoples around the world, they live off hunting, right? I mean, we have to kill the bison and the leopard and the bear and the elephant and what have you in order to survive. So make no mi- mistake about it. We're gonna keep doing that. But one way to protect yourself, protect the hunter psychologically from the sort of moral questions around that, any moral pain around that, is to say sort of like thank you. Like, thank you, elk.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm.
- SJSebastian Junger
Thank you, bison, for giving us food to eat. We respect you. We honor you. You know, this, and there's a whole sort of ritual process that incorporates the death into a, a, a, a, a, a context of respect, right? Um, and so here's what I, I'm gonna go, just go out on a sort of crazy limb here. We all know that the miracle of modern society, and I don't mean that ironically, it truly is a miracle, and we can talk about it later. I'm alive because some nearly miraculous Western medicine intervened when I was dying and saved my life, right? So on many, many levels, this society is a miracle. It's transcendent. We understand the cosmos. We understand the human body. We, I mean, I could go on and on. You know, and we can fly in airplanes and drive cars. I mean, it's insane, right, how amazing it is. But we al- we also know that it costs the planet a lot, right? I mean, we are gouging mountains and cutting down forests and polluting the ocean and blah, blah, blah. That's the cost of our amazing society. And what's interesting about that is virtually all humans think that nature is beautiful, right? I mean, you can take the most hardcore, ultra-right-wing, like anti-climate change, anti-vaxxer, whatever, they know a tree is beautiful, and when you cut down a tree, it's less beautiful, right? We all know that. Every child knows that. We all know that nature is beautiful and the world, the planet's a wondrous place. It's our home. It's our Mother Earth. We all know that. And we are basically killing the elk, killing the buffalo in order to eat without saying thank you. And I think it might change, in some ways, the whole conversation about environmentalism, even if we didn't do anything differently, even if we kept strip mining mountains because we need to, because we might need to. I don't know. You know? Even if we, even if we kept cutting down forests because we need trees, we need paper, whatever. I mean, I'm not saying we should or shouldn't do anything of that sort. But if we just added an acknowledgment of the harm and a g- and a, a sort of thank you to the Earth for providing our sustenance, if we just did th- did that, it would reconcile this sort of like cognitive dissonance of all of us knowing that we hurt something we love in order to exist. And liberals hurt the planet just as much as conservatives, by the way. Like, the sort of liberal piety, "Oh, I drive a Prius, so I'm good," is complete nonsense, right? We all need to acknowledge it. And I'm just, I would just say, like, we might learn something from native peoples about protecting ourselves emotionally and psychologically from the necessary harm that we do By overtly stating and ritualizing that relationship with the Earth. And so the next time they flat top a mountain for coal, why not bring in a minister, a priest, a shaman, or all three to say thank you to the mountain? You know, like, it won't hurt, and it might actually do people, the community, and the coal miners, and all of us that use electricity, it might actually do us a lot of good. That's just my thought for the week.
- PAPeter Attia
No, I, I, I, I, I think that's very powerful. And, um, and I, and I, and I, I think when it comes to animals in particular, because look, it's a very controversial topic, and you can't talk about hunting without offending, you know, half the population. But, you know, my view has been if, if you choose to eat meat, um, it's a good idea for you to at least understand what it's like to take a life of what you're eating and to remove the distance between you and the animal you're eating, and it will change the way you eat, right? I mean, the, you know, m- this will probably be the first year when I will subside entirely on wild game that's been hunted, you know, ethically. And, and, and there's literally been a change in my palate, right? Like, I just don't like eating big, you know, steaks and things that, that frankly are a little forced, right? There's, there's really something to be said for this other thing. It's not for everybody, and I don't feel like, I don't feel like I should impose that on anybody, and that, that's just sort of my little two cents on it. But I did bring my daughter on a hunt once, two years ago, and she was only 11 years old. And I remember thinking, "Well, this could be very traumatic for her," because it was a deer, and a beautiful type of deer called an axis deer. I think they're the most beautiful animals to look at. Um, but when the, after the animal died, fortunately it died very quickly, um, I wanted her to come up and kind of lay her hands on it while it was still warm and understand, like, the, you're gonna eat this tonight. Um-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... but this thing gave us a gift, and, and we actually did-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... we sort of went through this exercise you described where we thanked the deer 'cause it was gonna feed us, and it fed about 40 people that night. Um, a- and I, I... She still looks back at that very fondly.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. Yeah. That must have been a complete- absolute core experience of our human ancestors for, you know, as I said, most of, most of human evolution, is that relationship wi- of, of respect with the animals that had, that, that you, that you fed yourself with. Um, and, uh, I, I feel like it's psychologically enormously healthy, and one of the things this society is, one of the ways in which it's unhealthy is that it has de-ritualized the vital processes that keep us alive, that keep us fed, that keep us sheltered. Uh, it's de-ritualized them and allowed us to actually not acknowledge the harm that we do. I mean, we all know in our heart, right? But, and then when you can articulate it, I mean, the difference between hurting someone's feelings and hurting someone's feelings and saying, "I'm so sorry, you know, that I hurt your feelings. I kinda had to do it. We were not a good couple. We had to break up. But I, I, you know, I'm still, I'm still hurting from the, the sorrow that, that, that unavoidable decision that I ca- carry in me." You know? And, and I mean, you, you, there's a world of difference between dumping someone and having a conversation like that, right? And that's the conversation we need to have with our planet, regardless of where you fall on the climate change environmental spectrum. Uh, you could be a hardcore, you know, like, "I'm driving a vehicle that gets eight miles to the gallon, and I don't care about a- a- conservation at all." You can be that person too and still acknowledge the harm, and it would be very good for you.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. I mean, that's a great example of sort of dialectical synthesis and holding these truths seemingly contradictory, but together, and I, and I, I agree completely with that.
- 1:29:08 – 1:42:04
How parenting has changed Sebastian, and the incredible pain of losing a child
- PAPeter Attia
Um, whe- when did you have your, how old were you when you had your first child?
- SJSebastian Junger
Uh, I was 55.
- PAPeter Attia
How did that change your appetite or tolerance for risk? Because again, I, I've never taken what you've said to be thrill-seeking, right? I don't think anybody who's read your work would say, "This is a guy who's, you know, who's doing this because when he's not base jumping, he has to be doing that other thing." Um-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... but there's no way to deny that what you're doing was very risky. Um, w- what was the, what was the, the change in your, in your outlook to your own life and the risks that you took, um, once you became a father?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, my, yeah, I mean, my mi- my life is not my own now in the sense that if something happened to me, um, lifelong consequences would be borne by my wife and my children. I have two little girls, four and a half and, and one and a half, who are the center of my, center of my world, right? And, um, you know, I would die for them in an instant, and my main job right now is to not die, right? [laughs] Like, just to keep myself alive. But, you know, I stopped war reporting. I mean, so right now I'm in- incredibly risk-averse, right? I mean, I look both ways before I cross the street. I don't cross against the light. I, um, most of the time. Uh, I drive the speed li- you know, whatever. On every, uh, uh, I, I don't like ladders. I mean, you know, on every, like, in every avenue, I'm very, very cautious. I stopped war reporting, um, in 2011.
- PAPeter Attia
This was right after Tim died?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. When my, so my colleague out at Restrepo, O.P. Restrepo, where we filmed Restrepo and where, you know, where we spent, off and on spent a, a, a deployment, uh, with 2nd Platoon and Battle Company, One 73rd Airborne. Um, he was a brother and a colleague and a friend, and we were out there together a lot, and we made a film together, and we went out, went to the, were nominated for the Oscars together. And a few weeks after the Oscars, we were gonna cover the Arab Spring on assignment for Vanity Fair. At the last minute I couldn't go And, um, and he was killed in the city of Misrata by shrapnel that, a little piece of metal that hit his femoral artery in his groin, and he bled out. And, um, after that, I, I, um, I saw what his death did to everyone who loved him. I mean, you know, Tim, um, I think, I don't, you know, I think his death was fairly rapid and painless, um, and his problems were over, but his, the, the, the people who loved him, their problems were just beginning. And I watched how that worked, and I was like, "I'm not gonna do that to the people who love me." I'm, you know, I ... War reporting at that point went from seeming sort of noble and, uh, selfless to something that seemed quite selfish, uh, and self-concerned, and so I stopped. I might not have had that reaction at 25 or 30 or 35 or 40, but I was almost 50, and so I stopped. And, you know, I never loo- I never looked back. I've never wanted to go back. I miss, I miss some of those experiences, but I don't wanna repeat them.
- PAPeter Attia
Given that you've experienced both sides of that sacrifice, what does it, what does it tell you about the people who can do those jobs, whether it be soldiers, firefighters, uh, you know, fishermen in Alaska, uh, who also have families, who are making those choices, and the stakes are, I think, as high as they could possibly be, because presumably they understand what you just said?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. I, you know, I don't, I don't know how they do it. Um, a lot of soldiers don't have kids. I mean, the guys that I was with out there were mostly 19, 20, 21. Almost none of them had children. Um, some, a few did. Uh, but, um, lots of sol- you know, lots of soldiers do have kids, and, and, uh, you know, particularly once you get into the National Guard and units like that, like, oh my God. Uh, and firemen of course have fa- you know, it's a big, very family-centric, you know, culture. Um, I don't know how they do it. And I also don't know how with the fire department, the paramedics, I mean, you know, they have children, and they're pu- you know, they go to car accidents where they're, they're, you know, they're pulling dead children out of the backseats of vehicles. Like, I mean, I mean, psychologically, I don't know how they do it. I don't know how they, I don't know how they process the trauma. I mean, I can't even read a news story about something bad happening to a child. I mean, literally, I can't even read it, right? I don't know how they do their work, the level of trauma that those guys endure and women endure, um, seeing that. And also, you know, frontline, you know, ER doctors, I mean, all of it. I, I mean, really, uh, I'm just reminded of myself in Liberia counting, you know, counting the bodies in the pile of bodies and, like, sort of wincing at the children. You know, like, the cost of that later, two ye- two weeks, two years, 20 years later, the cost of that, I just, like, I worry about those people. I, I, I don't understand how they survive it psychologically.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, when I, when I went to medical school, I think everybody who goes to medical school has a very cle- not everybody, but I think a lot of people have a very clear sense of what they want to do. They're, they're very specific. It's, "I, I want to become this kind of a doctor." And so for me, that was pediatric oncology. That was, those were the experiences I had seen while I was an engineering student that, you know, led to my change of heart and l- l- led me to decide I wanted to go to medical school. And I remember even interviewing in medical school or for medical schools, and at, at one interview in particular, um, the, the person who was interviewing me, who was a, a surgeon, was an ENT surgeon, you know, said, "Well, you wrote your essay about this and you want to do pediatric surgery. Um, uh, pardon me, you want to do, uh, pediatric oncology. Um, I just want to tell you that I think that's a horrible idea. Um, uh, I- one day you're going to have kids, and you will not be able to do this job." Um, he said, "Right now, that might seem like something that you can do, but one day you will have kids, and that will be the most difficult thing to do, is to take care of dying kids." Now again, that's obviously not entirely true, because there are lots of people who take care of k- uh, kids with cancer who have children, and I've seen them, and I've seen them be completely attached. Like, they're not detached. They're not cold. They're not calloused. But, but it was a, it was at the time a comment that sort of put me off a little bit. Like, who is he to tell me that I can't do that? But he was entirely correct. Now that I have kids, I know as sure as Tuesday follows Monday, there is zero chance I could be a pediatric oncologist. Um, it's, it's, it, I, it's not something ... I just know that whether that's a flaw or not, it, without judgment, I can just say I couldn't do it.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. Yeah, I t- I totally understand that. I could totally understand that. And I'm, you know, I have two little girls, and, uh, my sensitivity to harm to children is [laughs] it's so completely unbounded that it makes it hard to even, uh, read the newspaper or go through life, you know? I mean, it's like, it, it, it sensitizes you enormously, and it's the, um, tra- and trauma, I mean, it sounds like you had a sort of traumatic experience in your, in your life, and I'm sorry to hear that. Um, trauma also particularly sensitizes you, and, uh, and, and seeing trauma to the innocent is something that you never, you will never fully escape the effects of that. Like, that will not go away. I mean, my opinion, like, uh, it, it, it's been 20, 25 years for some things for me, and it's like it, it hasn't changed at all in my head. Like, it's the most painful thing I can think of.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. I, I think even though I chose to go into something different, which was not specifically going to be geared around that, y- you still in surgery saw lots of trauma. Um, we were at a level one trauma center, which meant, uh, I think we probably averaged 15 penetrating traumas a day, and that doesn't tell you about all the blunt traumas, so all the car accidents. And, um, so you, you were... You know, death was right always there, and you would still see kids die because you still took care of pediatric trauma. Um, and that, that, that was and remains some of the most difficult stuff I've ever seen by far. Um, which is not to say now that, well, people dying of cancer isn't horrible, but there was something about the... at least one had a chance to make amends, and it wasn't sudden. But there was this thing about the kid dies in a car accident, and the parent is, had zero chance to prepare for this. Like it, there wasn't one nanosecond of preparatory grieving that could go on. I always found that to be the hardest stuff, actually.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Even though paradoxically it wasn't always accompanied by suffering on the part of the victim.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. Right. Right. No, I can't even-
- PAPeter Attia
To your point actually about your-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... about Tim.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, yeah. No, I can't even begin to imagine for the parents or for you dealing with the parents. Like ghastly. Absolutely ghastly. I mean, now that I... You know, I sort of knew that abstractly before I was a parent, before I was a father, but now I really know it in my bones, and I'm f- [laughs] I, my, my mind can't even go there.
- PAPeter Attia
I, I remember when one boy, um, I might have even told this story on a, on a, on a podcast once, but, um, he was 15 or 16 years old, and he was being driven home from school by his older brother. They were going through an intersection when a guy ran a red and T-boned them on the passenger side, which is where the victim was sitting. He arrived alive, but barely, and, um, I, I was the trauma chief, and so for, for this type of an indication, this is a blunt trauma. Um, and when he's unresponsive, it's basically going to be a head injury or massive internal bleeding. Um, you know, he's not gonna be dead because he broke his bones or something like that. It's going to be his aorta was sheared, one of the internal vessels was sheared or, or blunt head trauma. Uh, to make a very long story short, it was pretty clear he was dead due to head injury, um, or due to, due to the, you know, the, the, the response, the neurologic exam, but it was a vascular injury. And he probably should've been declared dead in five minutes, but I wouldn't do it. We kept... I just was adamant that we keep working, and, you know, 30 minutes later, I finally conceded he was dead and declared, declared him dead. Um, when I went to tell his mom, um, she was... She screamed so loud. It, it's not like in the movies sometimes where people sort of weep softly. Like this was, this was devastating. And I remember she tore the pocket off my scrubs. Um, literally grabbed my chest and tore the pocket off my scrubs. I spent hours with her. I would actually go to his funeral. It was one of the very few people I didn't know whose funeral I went to. And when... You know, at this point I'm in a suit, right? When it came time to walk past the casket, she was there. I had, I didn't think for a second she would remember me. I mean, 'cause how could she, right? And there were hundreds of people walking past, and she was greeting them all sensibly, right? When she got to me, she did the same thing. She completely collapsed, grabbed me, and tore the pocket off my dress shirt.
- SJSebastian Junger
Wow.
- PAPeter Attia
And I was really-
- SJSebastian Junger
Wow
- PAPeter Attia
... really moved. I mean, I just couldn't believe this had happened. I, I couldn't believe she would even remember some random person, although obviously it was such a traumatic experience. But I kept that shirt for a very long time as kind of a reminder of something that [lips smack] on a given day can change the course of your life. Like such a random freak thing, and how many lives his siblings and, uh, it's just... It, it, um, it blew my mind, but there was, there was like a memory within her for this, for this interaction separated by days-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... and, and obviously by endless, um, sadness.
- SJSebastian Junger
That's brutal. That, I mean, what a, what a devastating thing. Um, I'm so- I'm sorry. That's, that's a hard thing.
- 1:42:04 – 1:48:15
PTSD and the influence of community on healing
- PAPeter Attia
How do you think we are doing as a society, and, and we can say that's medically or not medically, um, in terms of treating, uh, victims of PTSD? And, and we can even just limit this to, to, to, to combat, 'cause I think people can have PTSD from many things that are not combat related. Um, but t- going back to the friend who said to you in 2003 with incredible insight, "We're about to get very, very familiar with PTSD," well, she was right. Um, how are we doing?
- SJSebastian Junger
Well, I mean, not surprisingly for a society that has astronomical levels of, uh, addiction, depression, suicide, anxiety, compulsive disorders, uh, astronomical levels of all of those social ills, not surprisingly, we're not doing too great on the PTSD front. Um, statistically, the wealthier the s- the more affluent the society, the worse, the higher the incidence of PTSD, right? Like if you live in an affluent society, you are statistically prone to worse and longer PTSD than if you live in a poor society. Okay? Um, in a poor society, there's an expectation that life is hard, so when something bad happens, it's not so much of a shock. And also, in less affluent societies, uh, in the developing world particularly, um, people live in more... They have a more communal existence because they need each other. So if you go to a, uh, you know, a village in Africa or in Asia or wherever it may be, people are interdependent on one another because they don't have their own, like, little house in the suburbs, in the American suburbs the way I grew up. Um, and that social proximity is a, a, is a buffer for psychological struggles. And so suicide is lower in those communities, dep- depression rates are lower, anxiety's lower, even though those lives are stressful in all kinds of ways that ours aren't because we're an affluent society. So the problem... I mean, humans evolve to survive. We're great at surviving, right? We evolved in a violent and unpredictable world where people had accidents or were attacked by animals or other human beings all the time, and life was traumatizing. And if trauma was psychologically incapacitating to a majority of people for any length of time, the society wouldn't exist because the group couldn't survive because there'd be no one around to function because everyone's traumatized, right? So clearly, as a, in terms of us, our species, trauma is something that humans are designed to work through fairly quickly because the business of survival has to be attended to. And, uh, so the, the, the statistics bear this out. Within, you know, the, the maj... For most people, the majority of trauma symptoms disappear within three months, right? And about 80% of people wind up with long-term, um, long-term trauma reaction that doesn't diminish with time. So in my opinion, I mean, I'm not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, I'm not a doctor. I've looked at this as a journalist. I've had my own experience with PTSD. But in my opinion, the problem is, in our society, is that we see PTSD as something that needs to be treated, right? The reason there's a long-term problem with trauma reaction, I think, is partly because we live in such an alienated, socially unconnected, non-communitarian society. People live in incredible isolation. Um, ch- children have their own bedrooms. I mean, this is the first time in human history that a society has been affluent enough to give children each their own room in a middle class house, right? Insane. In human terms, completely insane, right? Like, not, that's, children don't, don't, aren't supposed to be by themselves in the dangerous world. You know, the way people sleep, uh, traditionally sleep in groups in human society. Um, that families live in their own automat- you know, sort of self-heated, self-sustaining house or apartment unconnected to their neighbors, who are unconnected to any sense of commun- you know, sort of community endeavor is also, like, completely insane, right? And completely new in, in the human experience. And what I would... You know, what I would say is that the, I mean, what the statistics bear out, is that when people experience trauma communally and recover from trauma communally, it goes quite well. I looked at a, um, at, at, at a study that was done in a, in a very war-like tribe in East Africa. They were a raiding society. It was a cattle herding society. They were a raiding society, and warfare was quite, uh, normal. It st- it still is. The warriors that were well connected socially, I mean, I don't mean status-wise, I mean that, that were w- that were he- embed- well embedded in the community, uh, would come back from these very violent raids with, you know, a sort of startle response and some other sort of surface level trauma reactions, like they'd jump at loud noises or whatever. Sometimes nightmares. You know, whatever. Like... But they wouldn't get depression. The depression component of PTSD was not something they had to struggle with because they had a healthy relationship with their society. The warriors who did not, that were not socially connected in a healthy way, those are the w- the ones who were prone to long-term depression, right? So what I would say is that our society is not good at treating PTSD because it's psychologically stressful for everybody, and you can, um, virtually everybody, and you can see the results of that in our rates of depression, suicide, addiction, anxiety, all those other things.
- 1:48:15 – 1:54:32
Isolation of modern society and the debate over young kids sleeping in bed with their parents
- PAPeter Attia
Again, it comes back to this challenge of with modernity has come amazing things, right? Like, I don't, I would never wanna go back and live 10,000 years ago, even though I acknowledge that they probably had a much greater sense of community and belonging and purpose, because frankly, I like that I don't have to worry about my drinking water, and I like that, you know, I'm never starving, and I like that there's not a tribe 100 miles away that wants to kill me, and all these other things. But at the same time, the example you gave about children sleeping in the room is a, is a, is such a fascinating one, because it's one I've discussed many times with my wife, right? So everyone who's had kids probably can relate to the fact that at some point, um, in our experience with three kids, it always seems to be about four years of age, they stop wanting to sleep alone, right? So we were pretty lucky. All of our kids were, you know, sleeping in the crib fine. They didn't, you know... We, we, we had pretty good sleepers. But boy, when they turned four, they were not happy about being alone in their room. And what does the textbook say? Well, you know, you go through all of the do this, do that, do this, do that, but none of the do this, do that is bring them in your room, right? Like, that's Absolutely not the, the, the, the sort of textbook thing to do is bring your four-year-old into your bed with you. Um, but of course, that's exactly what would've been happening 10,000 years ago. So on some level you have to think, "Well, gosh, we probably evolved to sleep with our children."
- SJSebastian Junger
Americans are the only mammal that doesn't sleep with its young. Let's just put it that way. And Americans, and I'm including, um, you know, the British-speak- the English-speaking world. I mean, our culture is essentially derivative of, of, of, of, of England. And so in England, um, removing your child from your bed space started in the 1700s, um, and then spread throughout the English-speaking world, but it is not the human norm. It never has been, and it still isn't. I mean, most of the world sleeps in a communal space. Uh, most of the world is not affluent enough to give their ch- child their own crib and their own bed, and their own room. Um, uh, if you went camping in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana with your family, you would not put your, you know, four-month
- PAPeter Attia
Right, we wouldn't have five separate tents. [laughs]
- SJSebastian Junger
Wouldn't have five, right?
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, exactly. Right? You would keep your four-month-old right next to you, right? 'Cause it's a dangerous world, and the four-month-old knows that, and the four-year-old knows that. And the thing about ... I mean, infants get their safety from proximity to adults, period, end of sentence. And they know at one month, at four months, at three years, at four years, at 10 years, they know that if they're by themselves in the darkness, their life is in danger.
- PAPeter Attia
Th- think about how profound that is, Sebastian, right? Because I think, I think someone who doesn't have kids might think that sounds strange, but I bet that many people listening to this who have kids will appreciate the almost irrational fear that a four-year-old can have of sleeping alone in the darkness. But if you think about it through the lens you're describing it, which is this is very evolutionarily hardwired, it shouldn't be surprising, right?
- SJSebastian Junger
No, it's not irrational, and it's not irrational at all. I mean, in, in the context of modern America it is, um, most of the time, right? But I mean, look, the big threat to, to, to humans were the large cats, right? I mean, in our evolution, right? And the large cats that hunted at night. And so nighttime was a very, very dangerous time for humans. They found countless human, or you know, early human skulls with the sort of four prongs of the front teeth of a, of a large cat, a large feline, you know, having punctured the skull, right? And, and so a, a, a child or even an adult that was alone in the darkness, their life was at risk. You cannot fight off a lion by yourself, right? And unless you happen to have an AK-47 next to you. And, um, so you know, people that are surprised at this, what I would say to them is, "Look, try going camping by yourself. Go into the woods and see how much sleep you get if you are completely alone in the Bob Marshall Wilderness," right? Now go camping with a group of friends and see how well you sleep. You will sleep a lot better because you're in a group, right? Could the group do anything if they were attacked by a grizzly bear? Probably not. Like, you're probably just as much m- as much at risk by yourself as in a group. But there's something about being alone in the darkness that even makes adults fearful and will not, and, and n- and they will not get a good night's sleep. So if you don't believe me, just go camping by yourself for a night and see how well it goes. And you know, uh, children who are, um, I think the a- ghastly term is Ferberized. There was a doctor named Dr. Ferber who wrote a book about how to Ferberize your children and get them to sleep in their own room. Uh, you, you put them, quote, "down," put them down early, and then you and your wife or husband can have a nice evening on your own. Um, he later recanted everything he taught in the early 1990s. There's an article in The New Yorker about it. Um, and he said he was dead wrong about making children sleep by themselves. It was completely, it was counter to evolution. It was unhealthy for the child. It was quite nice for the adults, but not even that nice, because the screaming of the, of the terrorized child, you know, is, is hard to take as well while they're being Ferberized. So, so Dr. Ferber himself actually recanted all of that.
- PAPeter Attia
Hmm.
- SJSebastian Junger
It's worth tracking down. So right now, most of, most of the world, people still ch- sleep with their children, and there's a point. You know, we, uh, my wife and I have a- always slept with our children. Our eldest is four and a half. We make it clear to her, "Listen, if you wanna ... " You know, we have some spare mattress in the closet. I'm like, "Listen, if you wanna take that little mattress and sleep in the kitchen or sleep on the couch in the living room, you know, go for it. You don't have to sleep here." Like, you know, we have a platform and we have a pad on the floor in the, what used to be the bedroom. Uh, there's no bed there anymore. I'm like, "Listen, honey, you can sleep wherever you want. [laughs] It doesn't matter to us, but you're always welcome in bed, you know, with the family." And, and that's where she prefers to sleep.
- 1:54:32 – 2:01:43
Why Sebastian doesn’t own a smartphone
- PAPeter Attia
A- another, um, thing that you, you do that's pretty different from the average person in America is you don't use a smartphone. Um, obviously that's a very deliberate decision. Talk to me a little bit about it and, and how it's probably made your life better, despite the fact that you've given some things up, right? You can't email people when you're on the run. You have to be at a computer to send an email. Um, so you've made, you made some sacrifices to do that relative to the expectations p- potentially of others around you, 'cause obviously 30 years ago you didn't need to send email, let alone send it while you were on the run. But we now live in a world where people expect responses and things like that. But walk me through the calculation and the trade-off that's led you to decide, "Hey, I'm not carrying a smartphone, and I'm happier for it."
- SJSebastian Junger
I was pretty simple. I mean, I didn't have to give anything up because I never had a smartphone, so I never ... The idea of sending an email while you're on, walking down the street is, like, insane to me, right? I mean, I just, like, that's something that happens at your desk when you're working. And when you're walking down the street, you wanna be in the street. You know, A, so you don't get run over by a truck. B, so that you can observe this li-... I live in, I live in New York City, in Lower East Side Manhattan, like, the sort of bounty of human experience, the sheer craziness and wonderment of being part of human society in New York City or anywhere. I mean, that's, I want to, I, I want that, right? When I'm walking down the street, that's what I wanna be experiencing, and when I'm at home working at my desk and I gotta deal with email, which is such a sort of tax on our, on our energy and our time, I, you know, I wanna confine that as much as possible. It's drudgery, and I don't want it invading something sort of, to me, precious, which is the experience of being alive. I will also say that, uh, you know, I wrote a book called Freedom, uh, of how humans maintain their autonomy in the face of more powerful forces, more powerful societies, oppressors. Um, one of the main ways in a modern society that people get deprived of their freedom is through addiction. We are, we are an enormously addicted society. People are addicted to drugs, they're addicted to television, addicted to social media. Uh, to the extent that you're addicted, you are unfree. And, um, uh, the tech giants that developed social media, um, figured out there are algorithms that elicit a, an essentially addictive compulsive response to social media engagement. Like, they deliberately figured out the math of how to addict people to their iPhones, right? To social media. That addiction has relate, has resulted in they've clearly correlated depression and anxiety and suicide in teenagers, particularly teenage girls, starting with the advent of Facebook in, I believe it was 2012, right? They've, they've watched the line shoot upwards with the use of social media. It was, it's an algorithm that has killed people, right? Young people. It ha- they, they have blood on their hands because of this algorithm. And so one of the things I don't wanna do is find... I, I would be just as addicted to that stuff as anybody else, right? I mean, I, I mean, I, you know, we all have a potentially addictive personality, and I don't wanna be that guy walking down the street completely in, um, submerged in, in an environment which is designed to addict me further and further, uh, and then monetize my addiction, right? I mean, I'd like, "Thank you, no." I, like, I, I, I'll, I'll just go walk down the street on my own, and I'll check my email when I get back home, and all the other stuff that the iPhone offers. And a- and again, it's a little minor miracle. You have all of human knowledge, you know, at your fingertips. I'm not sure I want all of human knowledge in my pocket. If it gets all of human knowledge at my desk is an amazing thing, in my pocket, maybe not. You know, do I need Google Maps to get from here to there? No, I don't, right? I know the sun rises in the east. I can put a map in my back pocket. Like, I can figure it out, thank you. Do I need to, you know, whatever, ha- you know, get a car, you know, a ride? You know, you know, in an Uber with my iPhone? Yeah, that would be convenient, but I can also stick a, stick out my arm and get a taxi. There are workarounds for all the stuff that the iPhone offers you, and you avoid the enormous downside of compulsive addictive behavior and all the anxiety and depression that that statistically, um, gives rise to.
- PAPeter Attia
Does your wife have a smartphone?
- SJSebastian Junger
She does.
- PAPeter Attia
And I mean, obviously you respect her decision and she respects yours. Um, do you feel that there are some people who are just able to utilize it for the benefits and not succumb to the challenges, and do you, are you, are you simply taking a cautionary approach in your own, in your own life?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, I mean, she's very deliberately and consciously, particularly around the girls, does not, uh, does not do that behavior, that obsorb obsessive behavior. I mean, the weird thing about email and texting, I mean, for most of your, in most of your life, if you have a something to do, a chore to do, shovel that pile of dirt over there. The more you shovel, the less work is left. The weird thing about e- email is that the more you do, the more you have to do. The, the Greek myth of Sisyphus, right, the never-ending task, that's email, right? And the harder you work at it, the more email you generate back at you that you then try to do as quickly as possible, which generates more, and, you know, it's, it will, you know, it's gonna kill you. And my wife doesn't do that, right? I mean, she just, half the time she leaves the house and she doesn't even have her iPhone 'cause she forgot it. Like, I mean, she's, she, she uses it in the way that I think, y- you know, in an extremely healthy way, and she d- she is very, very careful not to ha- exhibit those behaviors. And, but I'll tell you what, my little girl, I mean, my gir- little girl has had virtually no screen time in her entire life. She doesn't have a tablet. Like, we do not own a television. Uh, she, when we take a long drive somewhere, she gets bored. She looks out the window, she whistles, she sings, she goes to sleep. She did, she does what we people of our generation, or my generation did when we were young, is we got bored and we learned to entertain ourselves, uh, with little stories in our mind or what have you, and that's how she, uh, my daughter deals with it. So, um, she ha- is, has a completely screen-free existence and, but if you give her an iPhone, the first thing she does is get addit- it's, get addicted to it, right? She starts... I don't know how, I mean, she's four. How did she learn this? Like, this, the, I mean, the design is so intuitive that even an uninitiated three-year-old can learn it within minutes, and then the only thing she wants to do is play with that phone, right? So that to me is like, oh, they knew what they were doing. It worked. They figured it out. They hooked a three-year-old within minutes. If that's not evil, what is, right? So, you know, we don't even let her near that
- 2:01:43 – 2:06:17
Parenting through an evolutionary lens
- SJSebastian Junger
thing.
- PAPeter Attia
How much of your philosophy around, you know, having your kids sleep with you, not having, uh, a smartphone, et cetera, how much of that do you think is influenced by your time in combat? So, uh, as a thought experiment, let's go back to 1985. Um, you ultimately decide, "You know, I, I wanna be a lawyer." You go to law school. You're ... So you're, you're living in, you know, Lower East Side right now. Um, you're working for a law firm. Everything else is the same about you. You've married the same woman. You have the [laughs] same kids. Again, it's a silly thought experiment.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Do you think you carry a smartphone? And, and, a- and think of it less through the lens of, well, as a lawyer it might be expected that I need to have my phone on me 24/7. It's less through that lens and more through the philosophical lens I'm asking this question.
- SJSebastian Junger
So if I were young, I mean, I think it's more a cultural thing. Like, if I were young, if I were 25 and came of age when all this stuff was normal, I, you know, I would f- I mean, I, I would probably have one of them, right? You know? I mean, y- I think you're younger, younger than me. I'm 59, right? So but what, what I didn't do was a- adopt it in midlife, and there was something about the behaviors of people with iPhones that I just thought, "I don't wanna look like that," right? I mean, occasionally I smoke a cigarette, right? One of the things I don't, you know... S- and I see smokers standing, y- you know, furtively outside, you know, you know, doorways in Midtown smoking their, their noon cigarette, and even though I en- can enjoy a cigarette, there's something about the addictive, the visuals of that addiction that's so mortifying, right? I'm like, "I don't wanna be that person," right? That's how I feel about the iPhone. So I think it's more, I don't... It's not combat, right? I, I, you know, I studied anthropology. I see that through that-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- SJSebastian Junger
... see human life through that lens. I think about what are, um, healthy human behaviors. Um, I married a, a, a like-minded person, l- a like-minded woman, so fortunately she and I see absolutely eye to eye about that stuff. Uh, I have the reinforcement of other like-minded people. There's a wonderful website called Evolutionary Parenting, www.evolutionaryparenting.com, that basically walks you through how to-
- PAPeter Attia
Hmm
- SJSebastian Junger
... raise your child in an evolutionarily consistent way in modern society, like taking into account the obvious sort of context of all this. How can you keep, uh, you know, within sort of normal sensible norms, how can you keep your parenting within a sort of way that's sort of evolutionarily healthy and consistent?
- PAPeter Attia
What do they say about, um, food for example? I, I think this would be... I mean, there's the obvious, right? Don't feed them things that, you know, are pure crap, but do they talk a- anything else about food and eating and rituals and things like that?
- SJSebastian Junger
You know, they, they might. I mean, they're more a b- sort of behavior, behavior thing. And, you know, children are not out to foil your, your, your, your, your training, right? They're not out to foil your plans. Like, when, when three-year-olds have temper tantrums, they're not being, quote, "bad," right? The, it's part of a process of neurological development that they have to go through, and when you, um, uh, when you pathologize normal developmental stages and normal child behavior, like crying when you stick 'em in a dark room, when you pathologize that, they're doing something that they're evolutionarily wired to do. They're moving through neurological stages, development stages in a, in a normal and healthy way, and you, and when you pathologize it because it makes your life inconvenient, um, you know, eventually they will learn norms that abide by y- your preferences. Uh, but that doesn't mean it's good for them. It means it's convenient for you. And so what the, what, what this website does is talk about those norms and get you to understand those behaviors, um, in, in sort of evolutionary terms. So the, you know, my daughter, she, you know, every time she sees a sparkly, glittery object, she wants it. You can't walk through the damn pharmacy without her saying, "I want that, I want that,"
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- SJSebastian Junger
"I want that." Is she an abnormally materialistic, acquisitive girl? No. She's exhi- exhibiting absolutely healthy hunter-gatherer norms about acquisition of appealing things, right? And, and so when you, you don't wanna pathologize it. You don't wanna get her everything either, but, but you have to put it in a proper evolutionary context in order to have patience with it, and that's what this website does.
- PAPeter Attia
I, I cannot wait to check that out actually. Um,
- 2:06:17 – 2:26:54
Sebastian’s near-death experience and new perspective on the possibility of an afterlife
- PAPeter Attia
you've alluded to it briefly in our discussion, um, and I've heard you speak about it before, but you recently had, um, a, a very near-death experience. Um, tell me a little bit about that.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. I mean, you as a doctor will know what these numbers mean. Um, uh, so I had, um, I have an anatomical sort of anomaly in my abdomen. My celiac artery has been compressed by my median arcuate ligament, which is in the wrong place, and it's completely occluded the celiac artery. So the blood was forced to flow throughout my entire lifetime. Uh, it was not asymptomatic in me. Uh, the blood was forced to flow through smaller sort of sub-arteries that feed the pancreas and the duodenum, uh, and I guess other digestive organs. And those little arter- those arteries are smaller and not designed to take the full blood flow that the celiac carries, and over the course of, uh, presumably many years, uh, I hope it was a long time, 'cause I don't want this to happen again, um, one of the arteries in the pancreatic duodenal artery, one of the little arteries developed an aneurysm. And then for about six months I had this really awful pain in my upper abdomen, um, that came and went, and just being a stupid guy, I never went to the doctor. I'm like, "If it, if you can bear the pain, it's probably not gonna kill you," and, um-
- PAPeter Attia
What was the pain like?
- SJSebastian Junger
It would come and go, and it was a kind of searing, cramping, slightly nauseous pain. And it was... I, I, I've been told that abdominal aneurysms can cause pain, and there's a big nerve center right around the solar plexus, and I, you know, I think maybe it was pushing on that. But, you know, it wasn't the pain of kidney stones, but it was way more than indigestion, right? I mean, it was... You know, I would sit down and have to wait it out when it happened. It was pretty awful.
- PAPeter Attia
And what was the frequency of that?
- SJSebastian Junger
Um, I don't know, every couple of days, once a day, something like that. It would come and go. It would last half an hour, an hour, and then it would, um... And then after some months of that, I had a lot of other health problems. I was just in poor... Like, I had sudden onset a- severe adult allergies for some reason. Um, no idea why. Uh, I, uh, I just ha- I, I'm alwa- always been a big runner, and I had trouble running. I mean, just something was wrong with me, right? And, uh, I couldn't figure it out. And then after some months of that, the pain suddenly went away, and the allergies sudden- suddenly went away, like overnight. I was like, "Oh, great. I'm good." Right? And then within a few weeks, one afternoon, I had a dr- uh, I had a dream. I had a horrible nightmare that I'd died, and I was in... You know, it was about 6:00 in the morning. I'm in bed with my family, and everyone's asleep, and I had a dream that I'd died by some accident. It was an oversight, and it was stupidity on my part. And I'd died, and I was looking back at my family, and they were grieving, and I couldn't return to them 'cause I'd crossed over. And I was, and I was like, "Oh, you idiot. You blew it." And, uh, I woke up just, like, incredibly shaken. And I'm not a doctor. I think that my artery had already started dissecting, um, because the following morning, I had sort of ongoing pain when I woke up in my a... Something was wrong, and I still didn't go to the doctor. And that afternoon, it was a beautiful day, and I was gonna go running, and I was like, "I'm not gonna go running. I don't feel quite right." And within about half an hour... Thank God I didn't go running. I would've died crawling around in the woods. Within about half an hour, I felt this surge of pain in my abdomen. I was like, "Jesus, what is that?" And, um, flooded my entire abdomen. It w- And I was like, "Damn, that is strange feeling." It wasn't unbearable, but it was... I'd never had that feeling before. And then within a few minutes, I tried to stand up, and I almost fell over. My blood pressure apparently was just tanking. And what had happened was the artery, the aneurysm, had ruptured, and I was bleeding out into my abdomen. And of course, I didn't know this. And I was in the woods with my wife, and, uh, in a little cabin that I'd built. And, um, she dragged me back out of the woods, uh, me sort of stumbling, and got me to the driveway and put me in the car so I could sit down, and, and I started to go blind. Uh, the sky turned electric white, and that, that started to take over my entire field of vision. And I was syncopic. I was in and out of consciousness. And the paramedics got there, and by the time they got there, I was in something called compensatory shock. And so I suddenly, I sort of revived. I was, like, feeling okay. And the paramedics were like, "You know what? You're good. We think you're dehydrated. It's a hot day. Just sit and drink some water. You'll probably feel better." And I was like, "All right. That sounds good." And my wife is like, "You know, he went blind a few minutes ago. Like, you're taking him to the ER." So they took me to the ER, and about halfway there, I lost bowel-
- PAPeter Attia
And, and it was very far, right?
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah. It took them an hour and a ha- It was an hour and a half before I got to the ER, right? And, um, I lost my bowel control on the way there, and I was like, "All right. I went blind for a while, and I lost my bowels. Like, that's probably not a good sign. Like, something's wrong." And, uh, I got to the ER, and the, the medic who I tracked down later, the guy in the back of the ambulance with me, he said, "We got to the ER, and you just tanked. You s- turned white as a sheet." Uh, and my, my hemoglobin was 1.2, and the, the, the, the ER doctors were like, "You can't..." I mean, they, I think they'd never seen a hemo-
- PAPeter Attia
That... Yeah, that's sort of incompatible with life.
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah, it was, and that's what I was at. I was... I, they... I think I, I'd probably lost about 90% of my blood. I mean, I don't know. I was still conscious. I was in and out of consciousness.
- PAPeter Attia
How much IV fluid had they given you in the ambulance?
- SJSebastian Junger
They just put a bag in my arm.
- PAPeter Attia
Just a single bag?
- SJSebastian Junger
Maybe a couple. Yeah, a couple bags. I don't know. But I got to the ER, and I was 1.2. My blood pressure was 60 over 40. And the doctor asked permission to cut into my neck to put a line into my neck. I think it would be my carotid or my jugular.
- PAPeter Attia
Jugular.
- SJSebastian Junger
I don't know. Jugular, okay. And I said, "You mean in case there's an emergency?" I had no idea I was dying. And I said, "In case there's an emergency?" He was like, "This is the emergency right now." I was like, "Yeah, you got permission." So he started cutting my neck, you know, whatever they do. And, uh, and then I st- then that... And I, and basically that was when I di- I started to die. So my, a big, black pit opened up underneath me, and I started to get pulled down into it. And, um, and I said to the doctor, "You gotta hurry. You're losing me right now."
- PAPeter Attia
Did, did you say that, or did you think that?
- SJSebastian Junger
I said that to him. I said, "Doc, you gotta hurry. You're losing me right now. I can feel myself going." And then my dead father appeared. Now, I just want to stop and say I'm an atheist. My father was a physicist. I'm not religious. I'm not a supernaturalist. I'm not a mystic. I don't believe in anything I can't measure and can't test, right? And my father was the same way, and he appeared above me in a kind of presence. And he was... He seemed to be welcoming me, right? And I wanted to have nothing to do with him. And it wasn't a conversation. It was a communication. And he wasn't... I couldn't see him. I could feel him. He was a presence. And I was like, basically, "Not now, Dad." Like, "I don't wanna have anything... I love you, but I don't wanna have anything to do with you right now. I wanna, you know, I'm staying. I wanna stay here. I want nothing to do with what, you know, that, whatever that is." And-
- PAPeter Attia
How, how long, uh, earlier had your dad passed away?
- SJSebastian Junger
Uh, nine years earlier.
- PAPeter Attia
And you were with him when he died, if I recall.
- SJSebastian Junger
I was holding his hand, yeah. Um, and, um, so, you know, I have very spotty memory after that. I remember the doctor saying to the, to the, um, whoever was pushing me, um, "Go as fast as you can without running, without actually running. Go as fast as you can," I think was to the cath lab. And, um-
- PAPeter Attia
Do you remember them putting the breathing tube in your mouth?
- SJSebastian Junger
I can't remember if I remember or not. Um, I was in and out of consciousness. I remember they put me in a CAT scan, right? And they get, and they had to, um, uh, they, or they had to, they had to shave me. They, they had to put a line in my groin.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- SJSebastian Junger
Right?
- PAPeter Attia
Yep.
- SJSebastian Junger
Uh, and, uh, and I wanted to joke with them. I was, like, I was, I, I almost said, "I'm sorry, I forgot to shave down there this morning," right? I was, I was trying to make them laugh for some reason. [laughs] I don't know. Like, a very wacky, like, sensibility. And, uh, and they put a line in my groin, and they put... And, and I think they had trouble seeing where the bleed was 'cause I had so much blood. I'd been bleeding into my abdomen for an hour and a half, right? And, um, luckily, I'm a long distance runner. I got a good heart. I mean, the doctor said, "If you weren't in really top shape, you would've just die- you would've died. You would've gone into cardiac arrest, and your kidneys would've failed, and it would've been over." And, um, it took them another eight hours to find the leak. Um, I mean, I was on the fluoroscope for so long that I got radiation burns on my back. Two weeks later, this square red patch appeared on my back 'cause I had so much radiation. And I remember at one point the doctors looking at each other like... And I know this kind of thing is very hard to fix. And it was in the middle of the night in a small hospital on Cape Cod, Hyannis Hospital, and I remember the doctors looking at each other and literally are like, "What do we do?" Like, "We can't find it." Like, "What do we do?" And I remember thinking, "Oh, guys, tell me you don't tell me. I just didn't see that exchange." And, uh, but they, they, they were heroes. When they pulled it off, they finally found it, and they, they embolized it with through ca- catheter embo- embolism, and they gave me 10 units of blood. I, I wound up getting 10 units of blood, and they saved my life.
- PAPeter Attia
How long were you in the ICU?
- SJSebastian Junger
Uh, five days.
- 2:26:54 – 2:33:11
Sebastian’s experience with depression and anxiety
- PAPeter Attia
When you think about the PTSD associated with this particular event, does it manifest more with, um, depression or more with anxiety?
- SJSebastian Junger
Anxiety. Anxiety, for sure.
- PAPeter Attia
Was that also true of the combat PTSD?
- SJSebastian Junger
Uh, it was until Tim got killed and, um, then, uh... And I, I was, it was, I was in my first marriage, and I've talked about this before, so it's, I, um... You know, we lost a, uh, uh, we lost a, a pregnancy, um, and we found out right when, right when Tim was killed, and the timing was weird enough that I c- it was pretty complicated psychologically for me. And, um, that actually, that, for the first time in my life, sent me into a, um, like a real depression, like a dangerous depression. And I, I felt removed, completely removed and isolated from every person I loved, including my wife at the time. Like, I felt like I was living behind bulletploop- bulletproof plexiglass and couldn't escape. And, um, it wa- it was a dangerous, dangerous feeling and, um, you know, I've, uh, I've, I've, I've, I've, I figured it out, but it was a, it was a very, very unpleasant time in my life.
- PAPeter Attia
What do you think was the most important factor or factors that, that helped you emerge from that?
- SJSebastian Junger
Boy, that's a good question. I mean, I, I was talking to somebody, you know, a professional about it. That helped. Um, I, uh, I was married to someone I really loved, but the marriage wasn't working, and eventually we both sort of, like, confronted that and acknowledged it, and we ended the marriage. And that was very painful, but it felt like a healthy step. We're still friends. You know, we did it... You know, it mi- it wasn't a, wasn't a... The marriage didn't work, but the divorce did. You know what I mean? Like, we, we, we, um... And, um, I stopped, uh... I, I'd started drinking a little more than I probably should have. I mean, I've never... You know, and by no means was an alcoholic, but I, I had a unhealthy relationship with al- alcohol and I, I stopped drinking. Uh, I had atrial fibrillation, which is a arrhythmia in my heart, and I was told... You know, I've fixed that. I had a, a, an ablation that fixed it completely. Um, but, um, the doctor said, you know, you know, "Alcohol can trigger it. Try not drinking," and I didn't drink for a month, and I felt so good, like, I, that I'd, like, sort of turned the corner, and all of a sudden I was starting to feel like a, a healthy person, emotionally healthy person. It was a lot of, it's a lot of different things. A lot of different things.
- PAPeter Attia
H- how much did other people, s- outside of the therapist, um, how much did other people contribute to the improvement in your wellbeing? Again, I'm thinking about kind of the tribe, right? Who was your tribe at that point in life? You'd obviously lost a very important member of your tribe. If I'm doing the math correctly, you would go on to lose another important member of the tribe, being your father. Um, uh, so w- who, who were the important members of your, of your tribe? And, and is it necessary that they understand what you've been through, right? So can people who didn't know Tim or who have not been in combat be a part of your healing?
- SJSebastian Junger
So I, I, I met someone else and remarried, and she had been through some pretty tough things herself. Um, not combat, obviously. Uh, not obviously. It could've been, but it wasn't. Uh, um, and there was something about her compassion and understanding, um, that was enormously helpful to me. Um, that was, that was really quite profound. And, um, y- I mean, the problem with depression... I mean, the problem with anxiety is it doesn't make sense, right? You're anx- you know, you're anxious about something that isn't rational. So being told rationally, "You don't have to worry about this. You're not gonna get an- another, uh, arterial rupture. It never, it's not gonna happen. Statistically, you're fi-" You have to deal with the emotional... You have to... The, the anxiety isn't necessarily turn- tied to reality. Well, likewise with depression. Like, you can be very depressed, and the, the fraternity of other people, the love of other people might not reach you because the nature of depression is that you're at the bottom of the ocean, right? I mean, you're, you're like, "You can't reach me. I know you're talking to me. I know you love me. I see your lips moving, but you don't understand where I am. You can't reach me here." Right? And so, a- and I mean, that's the, you know, the, uh... I, I think one of the biggest things that helps, uh, some- someone in that, those circumstances, it's feeling needed and feeling useful and being asked to contribute. Like, "Look, bro, you might be depressed, but we need you to stay on guard duty for a while," or, "You need to kill that elk," or, you know, "We need some sandbags. The river's rising." Like, you... Pe- when people are needed by the group- They click into this thing that actually improves their own psychological state of mind. I mean, the admissions to psych wards in London during the Blitz went down, went down during the Blitz, during the bombings, right?
- PAPeter Attia
As did depression post 9/11. Suicide-
- SJSebastian Junger
That's right
- PAPeter Attia
... went down post 9/11.
- SJSebastian Junger
That's right. So the, the crisis engenders is a kind of call to action, which gets, allows people to be, to buffer themselves from their psychological troubles. And, um, you know, I think that the love of one person sometimes is quite painful to experience because you realize that that person who loves you can't reach you where you are, right? And, um, but me- being needed is a different thing. And, and, you know, I think ultimately that's, that sense of being necessary might be the ultimate antidote to the experience of depression.
- 2:33:11 – 2:39:07
The pandemic’s impact on mental health
- PAPeter Attia
You know, I remember really, um, I've always been very fascinated by the opioid epidemic. Um, and I re- so, so I was very attuned to how much of a problem it was, you know, years and years ago. And I remember really naively thinking as the pandemic took hold in late March, early April of 2020, "I wonder if this is a crisis that will make people better. I wonder if this is a crisis that will improve the collective state of our emotional health in the way that previous crises had." You alluded to them, right? The d- the Great Depression, World War II, 9/11. And of course, the answer turned out to be no, right? For most people, or at least on average, the answer was not yes, at least as it's been borne out by statistics in terms of the rates of accidental overdoses, which, um, saw an enormous increase, in fact, overtook, um, all other forms of accidental deaths. Uh, so it, it exceeded that of car accidents in the age demographic where car accidents had historically been the leading cause of, of death. And it wasn't just because people weren't driving, right? It was due to the surge in overdoses. Um, was I just sort of really naive to think that, like, that that, that that could possibly have the opposite effect? Is it obvious to you now why ... Is it, is it the isolation of the pandemic that is almost assuredly what fueled that? Or how, how, why was that not a crisis that, that, that did-
- SJSebastian Junger
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... that did better?
- SJSebastian Junger
I think a couple of reasons. You know, first of all, the, the, the, what we were asked to do to protect the nation was to isolate from each other, right? Because it was a pandemic. And the humans in a crisis want to come together, physically come together, like within proximity, physical touching of each other. Like, that's what pe- that's what makes people feel safe. And again, that's why children feel safe when they sleep with their, with their parents. They can touch their parents. Like, they feel them, and that reduces their anxiety, and they sleep very deeply, right? And they'll get a good night's sleep, and so will the parents if they're not stuck in a dark room. Well, likewise, when you're scared, if you're facing a crisis, the proximity of others, it raises oxytocin levels, it raises testosterone levels of men. It does all kinds of good things that allow the group to deal with the crisis. Um, this was a crisis that did the opposite. It alienated people. It isolated people. Um, and isolation, we know, is, um, w- very often leads to depression. And, uh, you know, just ask someone who's done a week in solitary confinement at a federal penitentiary what the effects of isolation are, right? I mean, that's where they'd rather be, you know, they'd rather be, like, electrocuted, right? They'd rather be take, have their meals taken away, anything, right? Than, than just please don't stick me in a hole by myself. It's the hardest thing for humans, and that's basically what we were asked to do, and understandably, it was a pandemic. But the other thing is that there was no unity of purpose. The political leadership, uh, was completely contradictory about what it meant to be a good American. And so on the one hand, you had pe- knowledgeable people saying, "Being a good American means wearing a mask and social distancing and eventually getting your vaccine," right? And then you had political leadership that was like, "You don't know what ... Um, no, it actually means not wearing a mask and not social distancing and not getting a vaccine." And so the, the discordant contradictory messages from the upper, upper echelons of our society I think made people crazy, right? There was no way to feel like, oh, I'm saving aluminum cans, and we're gonna give them to, you know ... Like, once a week I'm gonna take them down to the, the, you know, the scrap metal drive in my little town because the troops overseas need the metal. Like, there was no unity of purpose there because we were being told completely contradictory things by the political leadership.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, and I, and I suspect ... Well, it's interesting, right? The Depression, there wasn't an external enemy in the way that there was in World War II or post 9/11, and yet that unity could still exist, suggesting that even an infectious agent, though not an enemy per se, it's hard to be angry at a virus, uh, if handled correctly potentially could have been more, uh, at least less damaging. I don't want to say more unifying given the isolation re- you know, requirements at the time. But, um, could have been less destructive, I suppose.
- SJSebastian Junger
Had Donald Trump, um, come out and said, "It's your patriotic duty to wear a mask and to social distance, and you know what? If you get the vaccine, I know maybe you're worried about it, maybe you're scared of it. If you get the vaccine, you're a damn hero to this country." You know what I mean? Like, most of the country would have done it. And unfortunately, I don't know what his calculus was, but unfortunately he didn't choose to do that, even though, um- He sort of mumbled at one point that you should wear a mask, and he got himself a vaccine, right? I'm sure the whole White House staff did, as did all of Fox News and all of CNN. You know, like, everybody got the vaccine. But the split messaging from that side of the American political, um, environment, uh, was enormously confusing. And, um, I mean, I happen to be a Democrat. I enormously respect, uh, elements of the, the, the conservative political ideal. I get it. I don't share it, but I get it. I respect it. Um, that, that k- that kind of, that kind of thing was really, um, you know, incred- I, I found incredibly selfish and unbelievably anti-American and unpatriotic for the Trump administration to engage in that stuff.
- 2:39:07 – 2:44:52
Sebastian’s thoughts on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan
- PAPeter Attia
Not to make this a political question, although it sounds like it coming on the heels of that, [laughs] we're, we're, we're literally on the heels of, of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I just mentioned I came back from a hunt, and a number of the guys I hunt with are formal Spec- former Special Forces guys. And a lot of the time around the camp was, was kind of talking about their experiences in Afghanistan and their views on the US withdrawal. Um, I've received a number of questions from people on social media who knew I was gonna be interviewing you wanting your thoughts on the, the, the manner of the withdrawal and, um, whether it was necessary at all in the first place. Uh, so for example, a lot of the, the SEALs I spoke with were adamant that this was not something that should have happened, right? That this was no longer actually a war. It was really more of a peacekeeping operation, and 5,000 troops could have stayed there indefinitely and kept the Taliban at bay, um, and still would have been a fraction of the number of troops that we have in Germany, for example, or South Korea or any number of the, um, you know, geographies of our allies. What are your thoughts on that?
- SJSebastian Junger
I, I would agree, agree with your, your friends who said that. Um, it was, I mean, there's 40,000 cops in New York City, right? I think when we finally withdrew the last troops, it was down to a couple thousand, 2,500?
Episode duration: 3:18:48
In the uListen app, the transcript lights up word by word as you listen. Get uListen
Transcript of episode uaYKdPEktA0
