Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Malcolm Glabel and I'm back this week for
Speaker 1: a special bonus episode of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.
Speaker 1: We're sitting down with Sebastian Younger. Younger is the author
Speaker 1: of many books, but the one we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about today is Tribe on Homecoming and Belonging, which
Speaker 1: came out ten years ago but seems more relevant than ever.
Speaker 1: Younger spent years embedded with American soldiers during the Afghan War,
Speaker 1: and in Tribe, he explores what happened to those soldiers
Speaker 1: when they were in Afghanistan and also what happened when
Speaker 1: they came home. I should point out that I am
Speaker 1: a huge fan of Sebastian Younger's I think he's easily
Speaker 1: one of the greatest nonfiction writers of my generation. And
Speaker 1: this conversation was everything I had hoped it would be.
Speaker 1: Enjoy Hi, Sebastian, how you doing.
Speaker 2: Hey good, it's nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to this. Thank you for doing this.
Speaker 2: Oh it's a honor. Thank you. I'm really looking forward
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: So we want to talk about Tribe, which is your
Speaker 1: book from what almost ten years ago. I loved that book.
Speaker 1: I thought it was. I'm a big fan of yours
Speaker 1: in general, but that was I thought that book was
Speaker 1: something special.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It's still selling, which means people
Speaker 2: are so lonely.
Speaker 1: I was just curious how you came to write that book,
Speaker 1: what was your what led you into that subject.
Speaker 2: You know. I'd been a war reporter for a long time,
Speaker 2: starting in Bosnia in nineteen ninety three, a bunch of
Speaker 2: civil wars West Africa, and I was very very compelled
Speaker 2: by Afghanistan. Had been going there for years since the
Speaker 2: mid nineties, and eventually I was with American forces in
Speaker 2: eastern Afghanistan at a little outpost called Rastreppo. I was
Speaker 2: out at Ristreppo with a wonderful photographer named Tim Heatherington.
Speaker 2: I was out there off and on for a year.
Speaker 2: Was the forty man position. It was all men out
Speaker 2: there on this ridge. We were getting shot at just
Speaker 2: about every day. There was a lot of combat, a
Speaker 2: lot of casualties. Totally cut off from the outside world,
Speaker 2: very very hard place. When the guys got back, they
Speaker 2: all got really depressed. All the things they interest young men, right,
Speaker 2: young women, television, cars, sports, all this stuff that civilization
Speaker 2: has to offer for them. They weren't interested, and they
Speaker 2: started to talk about how they wanted to go back
Speaker 2: to Afghanistan, and I was asked about that in an interview.
Speaker 2: Basically the question was like, what's wrong with these guys,
Speaker 2: Like what's their problem? And just intuitively I said, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think they have the problem. I think they're
Speaker 2: coming back to a society, our society, which is sort
Speaker 2: of socially desolate and very hard to find a meaningful connection,
Speaker 2: meaningful community, to make sacrifices for it to be part of,
Speaker 2: to depend on. They have all that in spades out
Speaker 2: at Ristrepo, and they wanted to go back to the
Speaker 2: real thing. And I said, actually, their desire to go
Speaker 2: back in somebody shows their mental health rather than some
Speaker 2: kind of psychological struggle. And then, as an anthropologist I
Speaker 2: started to think about that question of what are people
Speaker 2: drawn to, and over and over again the answer is community,
Speaker 2: and that clearly reflects our evolutionary reality as social primates,
Speaker 2: and that we survive in groups, not by ourselves. And
Speaker 2: that began the sort of central thesis of tribe, which
Speaker 2: is really, in some ways the worst trauma, the worst hardship,
Speaker 2: is to be unconnected to others I.
Speaker 1: Want to go back to when you were in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: with that group of guys on that ridge. Were the
Speaker 1: things that you observed afterwards, the fact that these men
Speaker 1: longed for community. Did you see evidence of that when
Speaker 1: you were actually in combat in Afghanistan?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean structurally, yes, we were stuck on a
Speaker 2: hilltop and everyone dependent on everyone to sort of do
Speaker 2: their jobs, including me as a journalist, and my job
Speaker 2: was basically to not like screw up and cause a
Speaker 2: problem that they had to fix. Right, And I'd been
Speaker 2: in a lot of combat. I was in good shape,
Speaker 2: you know. I felt confident I could do my job
Speaker 2: in that sense. Emotionally, yeah, I mean it's really interesting
Speaker 2: to be in a situation where you're never away from
Speaker 2: the people in your community, even for a minute. Like
Speaker 2: I mean where we slept in these little plywood hooches
Speaker 2: that they knocked together. They had these sort of like
Speaker 2: rickety bunks that they built, and I could reach out
Speaker 2: with my arm and touch three other men. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're like we're on a submarine. The level of familiarity,
Speaker 2: you know, it's all men, right, So the love is
Speaker 2: expressed in extremely rough ways, but love it is, and
Speaker 2: you could see that in combat for their concern for
Speaker 2: each other, and they're concerned that completely at times when needed,
Speaker 2: eclipsed their own fear, their own self interest. And you know,
Speaker 2: the young men they get in a fight, into conflicts
Speaker 2: like it's not like it was all wonderful, but it
Speaker 2: didn't matter. The thing about brotherhood, as eyewitnessed it out,
Speaker 2: there was unlike friendship. Brotherhood was totally independent of how
Speaker 2: you felt about the other person had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with it. You might like the guy, you might not
Speaker 2: like the guy, you might not be able to stand
Speaker 2: the guy, but he's your brother. You will do anything
Speaker 2: for him because he would do anything for you. As
Speaker 2: the end of the sentence, do.
Speaker 1: You have any specific memories of that time that kind
Speaker 1: of illustrate that. Do you see anything that you're like, Oh,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, that's what brotherhood looks like.
Speaker 2: I mean, in combat, the guys were largely utterly un
Speaker 2: self concerned. They did their jobs, and by their jobs,
Speaker 2: I don't mean their roles that were sort of like
Speaker 2: handed down by the military, their jobs as they themselves
Speaker 2: understood their jobs to be, which meant being an effective
Speaker 2: combatant and ignoring the incoming rounds. I can't tell you
Speaker 2: how hard it is to ignore bullets they're going past
Speaker 2: your head. It's almost impossible. But if you don't ignore
Speaker 2: them and stick your head up above the sandbag and
Speaker 2: shoot back, everyone's gonna die. You cannot just cower. And
Speaker 2: doing that is an incredible act of sort of self negation.
Speaker 2: And if everyone does that, then there's a much greater
Speaker 2: chance that everyone's gonna be okay. Chosen company one valot
Speaker 2: to the north. They got mauled several times. They had
Speaker 2: one firefight where they took one hundred percent casualties. First
Speaker 2: platoon walked into an L shaped ambush and took six
Speaker 2: casualties in the first few seconds, I think it was.
Speaker 2: And one of those young men was named sal Junta,
Speaker 2: and he was the first living Medal of Honor recipient
Speaker 2: since Vietnam. I mean. Junta ran forward, throwing hand grenades
Speaker 2: because they were dragging off his wounded Fred. They the
Speaker 2: Taliban down a hillside into the darkness, and Shutta had
Speaker 2: bullets impacting his body armor, and he ran forward. He
Speaker 2: killed the guys who were dragging away his brother and
Speaker 2: administered first aid until more soldiers got there. You know,
Speaker 2: dragging your wounded friend out of the line of fire.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a powerful, powerful relationship, and I think
Speaker 2: an ancient one that only arises in the circumstances that
Speaker 2: require it for survival. That's an act of loyalty that
Speaker 2: is hard to find in the civilian world, and that
Speaker 2: if you experience it, it's missed, even though the things
Speaker 2: that make those acts necessary are horrific beyond description. This
Speaker 2: one guy said to me, Brendan o'bern, who's still a good,
Speaker 2: good friend of mine. He said, you know, Sebastian is strange.
Speaker 2: There's guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other,
Speaker 2: but we would all die for each other. Later, I
Speaker 2: kept thinking about that sentence, and I thought, Wow, no
Speaker 2: matter how nice life is back in the United States,
Speaker 2: if you're one of those young men, you are no
Speaker 2: longer in a group that you can say that about.
Speaker 1: It's a passion. When you were in Afghanistan, what impact
Speaker 1: did it have on you to be in that environment?
Speaker 1: Did you develop the same kind of bonds to the
Speaker 1: soldiers as they were developing to each other.
Speaker 2: I did, and it was interesting because it wasn't immediate.
Speaker 2: How could it be, You know, you're the new kid
Speaker 2: in high school and it takes a while to make friends.
Speaker 2: And we're twice their age. We're journalists, we're not soldiers.
Speaker 2: Are we going to be a liability? Can we keep
Speaker 2: up on the You know it was brutal. It was
Speaker 2: all foot movement, right, it was all on foot. That
Speaker 2: guys were carrying eighty ninety one hundred and twenty pounds
Speaker 2: of gear at eight thousand feet in one hundred degree heat,
Speaker 2: you know, in combat. Just insane Olympic level performance from
Speaker 2: these guys. And we're joining that group, Like, are we
Speaker 2: going to be a drag on them? Trip after trip,
Speaker 2: we of all got to know each other, and I
Speaker 2: start to feel this thing that I never felt before,
Speaker 2: which was a kind of love and loyalty for a group.
Speaker 2: And we've all felt love and loyalty to family members,
Speaker 2: to a partner, to a lover, to a friend maybe
Speaker 2: of course, but to a group. I realized, Wow, if
Speaker 2: I took a round, these guys would do whatever it
Speaker 2: took to help me, even exposing themselves to danger. I
Speaker 2: felt that feeling in me of like, wow, I'm ready
Speaker 2: to do that. I'm not going to curl up behind
Speaker 2: a tree while some guy that I care about that's
Speaker 2: in this group takes fire. That was never required of me.
Speaker 2: But I got to say that. The feeling of the
Speaker 2: certainty that I would do that, and the sort of
Speaker 2: pride I felt knowing that I would do that, there's
Speaker 2: a real pride in that, Like, Wow, I have that selflessness.
Speaker 2: I have it in me too. Who knew? This culture
Speaker 2: doesn't bring that out in people very easily, So we
Speaker 2: all walk around thinking we're selfish bastards. Were not, but
Speaker 2: the circumstances don't ask for that. Suddenly I'm in circumstances
Speaker 2: that were somewhat reproducing of our evolutionary past. I mean,
Speaker 2: humans evolved in groups of thirty forty to fifty people
Speaker 2: in a threatening environment where they had to depend on
Speaker 2: each other. That's our sweet spot, right. This was the
Speaker 2: first time I was in that kind of situation and
Speaker 2: I realized, Wow, I'm a good group member.
Speaker 1: It surprised you to think that you are a good
Speaker 1: group member.
Speaker 2: It surprised me because I was forty five and I'd
Speaker 2: never had to be before. And now I was like
Speaker 2: I became a father at fifty five, and it's a
Speaker 2: little bit of the same surprise, Like, Wow, who knew
Speaker 2: I'm a good dad and it's the most thrilling thing
Speaker 2: to feel. It was for me. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: at one point, Chosen Company, you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: they were ambush. It was a three hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: degree ambush. They took one hundred percent casualties. Tim and
Speaker 2: I talked about it, and I said, you know that
Speaker 2: could easily have been us. What are we going to
Speaker 2: do if that happens to And I said, I think
Speaker 2: we should learn first aid from the platoon medic and
Speaker 2: I think we need to be trained on all the
Speaker 2: weapons just in case, God forbid, we're in a Chosen
Speaker 2: Company kind of situation. And you know, that felt a
Speaker 2: little uncomfortable in terms of journalistic ethics, but I'm like, listen,
Speaker 2: if we're in a situation where everyone's wounded and we're
Speaker 2: all going to die, journalistic ethics are actually no longer. No,
Speaker 2: we're longer really get to vote, right, You're in survival mode.
Speaker 2: So we were trained up on all that stuff, and
Speaker 2: then I really felt like, all right, I'm in I'm
Speaker 2: really part of this. One of the things that helped
Speaker 2: is that I was not trying to write an objective
Speaker 2: analysis of the War on Terror in Afghanistan. I was
Speaker 2: trying to be as subjective as possible about what it
Speaker 2: feels like to be an American soldier. So me allowing
Speaker 2: myself the subjectivity of even arms length participation, like being
Speaker 2: trained on the weapons. You know, that sort of felt okay.
Speaker 2: But on a human level, I felt like, Oh, I'm
Speaker 2: finally a human being. I'm part of something that I
Speaker 2: would give my life for and that's been a human
Speaker 2: norm for hundreds of thousands of years. We're the only
Speaker 2: animal that does that in that sense, and it changed
Speaker 2: me forever.
Speaker 1: You know what this reminds me of. This is at
Speaker 1: a much lesser level. I've always wondered why rock musicians.
Speaker 1: This is a dumb example, but bear with me, why
Speaker 1: do they keep touring? Sometimes? They tour for years. I
Speaker 1: was watching The Last Waltz. The band tours for like
Speaker 1: seven years on the road. And then I was very
Speaker 1: briefly part of this little traveling show with a band,
Speaker 1: and we're on the bus and you'd sleep on the bus, right,
Speaker 1: and you'd drive from Indianapolis to Lexington or something right
Speaker 1: right right, And I was like, oh, like I suddenly
Speaker 1: got it, like close proximity, No, there's no your life
Speaker 1: is not a mistake, but you are in a collective
Speaker 1: enterprise where you're all depending on each other for the
Speaker 1: performance at the end of the Yeah, and it's there
Speaker 1: is something incredibly powerful about that feeling. No, if you
Speaker 1: add to that threat of life and limb, I can
Speaker 1: see you've turbocharged it and made it impossibly powerful.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, you've exactly identified it. You know. One of
Speaker 2: the things about combat about bravery, I mean as the
Speaker 2: one quality, the one virtue, the one value that you
Speaker 2: have to have out there, or you're not a member
Speaker 2: in good standing of a combat unit, you have to
Speaker 2: be selfless in your courage. The great thing about that
Speaker 2: is that you're completely self determining in that sense. Anyone
Speaker 2: can be courageous. You can be five foot two or
Speaker 2: six foot two, you can be good looking or not
Speaker 2: good looking. Your dad could be in prison or your
Speaker 2: dad can be a billionaire. It doesn't matter. You can
Speaker 2: choose to be unself concerned and courageous on behalf of others.
Speaker 2: And there is something liberating in that, and it's an
Speaker 2: amazing thing to see these young people step into that role. Think, Wow,
Speaker 2: I can just choose who I want to be. I
Speaker 2: have full access to honor and to the admiration of others.
Speaker 1: I love that that phrase full access to honor. It's
Speaker 1: a fantastic phrase.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah, And it's essential because that was our
Speaker 2: evolutionary past as well. The loss of brotherhood, of connection
Speaker 2: of community, the tragic loss of adversity, I'll even put
Speaker 2: it that way. That happens when soldiers come home is
Speaker 2: extremely hard on them. Most people in the military are
Speaker 2: not getting directly traumatized by bullets going past their head
Speaker 2: or by killing people themselves.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You can take a platoon that was not in combat.
Speaker 2: There was like fixing stuff on an aircraft carrier, oh, whatever, right,
Speaker 2: and they will have some of the same struggles when
Speaker 2: they go home, and you know, the sort of army
Speaker 2: shrinks and the VA and all the experts are to
Speaker 2: misdiagnose things in some ways. In my humble opinion, I'm
Speaker 2: not a psychologist, but they oh, you were on a
Speaker 2: deployment and now you're struggling when you can back. You
Speaker 2: have PTSD. How do you have PTSD if you weren't
Speaker 2: in combat. How does that work. One of the traumas
Speaker 2: of the many that are on offer in a warzone
Speaker 2: is later being stripped of that human affiliation that you
Speaker 2: came to need and love. One of the traumas is
Speaker 2: actually having to leave and go home. The human norm
Speaker 2: is to be together. Now you're not because you're living
Speaker 2: in your air conditioned house in the end of a
Speaker 2: cul de sac in a suburb. One of the problems
Speaker 2: with treating this is that if you insist that it's
Speaker 2: trauma from combat, the soldiers themselves, some of them who
Speaker 2: were in combat, are going to sort of have to
Speaker 2: fabricate things that explain how alienated and depressed they now
Speaker 2: are back home.
Speaker 1: It means it's just a fascinating insight, and the notion
Speaker 1: of PTSD has been constructed in the absence of an
Speaker 1: understanding of what happens in war. I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 1: a category of people who are genuinely psychologically impaired by
Speaker 1: what they went through. But we're incapable of seeing what
Speaker 1: is beautiful and powerful in something that extreme and dangerous.
Speaker 2: And part of the problem, I think is this idea
Speaker 2: that many people have in this society, a kind of
Speaker 2: default idea that this is the best possible society. What
Speaker 2: do you mean, We've got blenders and cars et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I mean all these sort of material benefits
Speaker 2: which are indisputable, and many of them a great blessing
Speaker 2: in terms of human comfort, human dignity, human life. So
Speaker 2: it's that this is the best possible society in some
Speaker 2: ways that you know, people think that. So if the
Speaker 2: soldiers are coming back and unhappy and self destructive, they
Speaker 2: must be really messed up, and they must be really
Speaker 2: messed up by combat, because I think there's an unwillingness
Speaker 2: in our society to say, oh, maybe we are all
Speaker 2: unhappy too, And if you look at the mental health statistics,
Speaker 2: we're not doing great right, like depression, suicide, addiction, anxiety.
Speaker 2: I mean, the levels are insane for a society that
Speaker 2: is this comfortable and affluent and safe.
Speaker 1: Maybe what you mean to say is those levels are
Speaker 1: paradoxically appropriate for a society of this level of comfort
Speaker 1: and affluence, and maybe those are the disorders that arise
Speaker 1: out of a world that's been stripped of any There's
Speaker 1: that lovely phrase that psychologis use desirable difficulty.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, they're entirely appropriate, but they seem to
Speaker 2: stand in conflict and contradiction to our idea of ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean soldiers on frontlines almost never kill themselves. If they
Speaker 2: commit suicide, it's when they come back. And it's not
Speaker 2: even necessarily related to the amount of combat they we're in.
Speaker 2: It's related to other things. And so then you're not
Speaker 2: going to fix it because you won't be looking at
Speaker 2: the deep alienation of our society that makes people vulnerable
Speaker 2: to suicidal impulses. There's an amazing film that was shot,
Speaker 2: I think in the late forties or right after World
Speaker 2: War Two, called The Best Years of Our Lives. It's
Speaker 2: about four or five soldiers from different units coming back
Speaker 2: on a transport plane and landing in some airfield in
Speaker 2: the Midwest. Their families don't even know they're coming home,
Speaker 2: and the first thing they do is go to a bar.
Speaker 2: So then they get into taxi and they're going to
Speaker 2: drop each other off at house after house.
Speaker 1: It's the fourth house from there.
Speaker 2: They pull up to the first guy's house and you
Speaker 2: could see the family in the windows. He hasn't seen
Speaker 2: his family in a year or two or whatever, and
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to get out of the taxi. Say
Speaker 2: how about the three of us going back to Butcher's place.
Speaker 1: They'll have a couple of drinks and then we can
Speaker 1: go home.
Speaker 2: You're home, no kid, He said, what about one more drink?
Speaker 2: And You're like, come on, man, you gotta go, and
Speaker 2: he goes.
Speaker 1: Those if I were going in to hit a beach.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm about to hit a beach, meaning
Speaker 2: land under machine gun fire and an atoll in the
Speaker 2: South Pacific. That's what coming home to his family felt like.
Speaker 2: One of the things that people do when they're facing
Speaker 2: something hard, painful, dangerous is they consolidate into a group
Speaker 2: for protection. There was a woman I spoke with who
Speaker 2: barely survived cancer, very lucky to survive, and she said,
Speaker 2: you know what, cancer was horrible. I'm lucky to be alive.
Speaker 2: But I do miss one thing about it, the cancer
Speaker 2: ward all of us who were together in the fight
Speaker 2: of our lives and we stuck together. And she said,
Speaker 2: I miss those people. I think she missed who she
Speaker 2: was in that moment, because again she was like rising
Speaker 2: above herself and having concern for others, and they were
Speaker 2: all doing that.
Speaker 1: It's like a drug, it's a passion. How old are
Speaker 1: your children.
Speaker 2: They're nine and six, two little girls.
Speaker 1: I also an older dad. I have four and two
Speaker 1: two little girls. Congratulates since I think and gracious and
Speaker 1: to you as well, we're in the same position. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious the things that you have explored in books
Speaker 1: like this, How does that change the way you parents
Speaker 1: your daughters. Have you thought about? How can you give
Speaker 1: them this thing that you've identified as being so important,
Speaker 1: which is this sense of community and desirable difficulty and
Speaker 1: finding meaning and adversity. How do you give them that?
Speaker 2: You know, the first thing we did was not have
Speaker 2: them grow up in an upper middle class community. I
Speaker 2: grew up in a pretty affluent suburb of Boston where
Speaker 2: we didn't know our neighbors particularly well. They're all perfectly
Speaker 2: nice people. We certainly didn't depend on them for anything existential,
Speaker 2: like can you help us fix the roof we got
Speaker 2: a leak, right, And certainly we weren't joining together to
Speaker 2: fight the rebels that were coming down the road and
Speaker 2: pick up drugs. All those forms of human adversity that
Speaker 2: people have bonded together to overcome utterly absent from the
Speaker 2: community that I grew up in. So we live in
Speaker 2: a mixed income but mostly lower income neighborhood and out
Speaker 2: of Manhattan. The building's mostly Spanish speaking is a five
Speaker 2: story tenement and we live on the four of us
Speaker 2: in five hundred square feet. So they're part of the community.
Speaker 2: They are part of that social fabric which is so crucial.
Speaker 2: You know, is it the Sioux nation on the northern
Speaker 2: Great Plains in eighteen eighty No, it's not right, but
Speaker 2: it's for our world in context. It's sort of as
Speaker 2: close as we can get. They have extremely limited access
Speaker 2: to screens. They have no use of an iPhone. It's
Speaker 2: they get a little bit of time on the laptop
Speaker 2: to watch some child programming or do du a lingo
Speaker 2: or what have you. But the interactive touchscreen, they're completely
Speaker 2: separated from it. And we also we co sleep right.
Speaker 2: We have a big pad on the floor and they
Speaker 2: have little bunk beds too in a different room and
Speaker 2: they can sleep there when they want. Sometimes they do,
Speaker 2: but mostly we sort of sleep in a big pile.
Speaker 2: And I've been sort of questioned about this by my
Speaker 2: sort of if I may say, bougie friends, They're like,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about. You need a bigger apartment.
Speaker 2: Every kid needs their own room. I'm like, look, Americans
Speaker 2: are the first mammal ever to not sleep with their
Speaker 2: young like, I'm sorry. And if you were going camping
Speaker 2: the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana with your like five
Speaker 2: year old and your three year old, you know what,
Speaker 2: they'd be in the same tent with you, which is
Speaker 2: the human norm, It's the primate norm. So why would you,
Speaker 2: as was done to me on day one, put them
Speaker 2: in a different room and close the door and make
Speaker 2: them cry it out in the dark. It's just insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I was thinking about something like if your
Speaker 1: daughters came to you and said I want to go
Speaker 1: to West Point.
Speaker 2: I would say why, and I'd be very curious about
Speaker 2: the answer, and she said, well, it's the only way
Speaker 2: to fulfill your patriotic duty. I would say, okay, well
Speaker 2: what do you mean by duty and patriotism? I have
Speaker 2: some questions. Yeah, but the idea that they would join
Speaker 2: the military, knowing what I know about the military, both
Speaker 2: its flaws and its incredible strikes, I mean, like, you
Speaker 2: know what, you might be a lot happier in the
Speaker 2: military than as a freelance writer.
Speaker 1: My sister in law grew up on an army base
Speaker 1: in New Jersey and describes it as paradise and for
Speaker 1: precisely the reasons you're talking about. By the way, that
Speaker 1: to be a child in a close knit community of
Speaker 1: people with a shared purpose was just magic. And when
Speaker 1: her dad retired from the Army, she was bereft. She
Speaker 1: was like, why are we leaving Paradise. When I did
Speaker 1: my book Bomber Mafia, and I spent all this time
Speaker 1: with these Air Force guys, I've never been more impressed
Speaker 1: with a group of people, not just in terms of
Speaker 1: their intelligence and their dedication, but it's just there's something
Speaker 1: about that experience which just you could feel the kind
Speaker 1: of character they had as human beings.
Speaker 2: And the loyalty to each other is it's extraordinary. My
Speaker 2: first in bed was two thousand and five, embedded with
Speaker 2: US Forces and it was the same unit I was
Speaker 2: with two years later, and they a lot of complicated
Speaker 2: things happened. We had to cross a mountain pass that was,
Speaker 2: you know, probably nine thousand feet and it was in
Speaker 2: the middle of the winter. The temperature was sub zero,
Speaker 2: and the guys were carrying the mortar teams were carrying
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty pounds on their back, one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty pounds on their back, righty, and these aren't
Speaker 2: big dudes either, just people, right, They're just normal people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We walked from sunset to sunrise in those temperatures at
Speaker 2: those elevations, carrying that kind of weight, and they were
Speaker 2: all in T shirts because they were sweating so hard.
Speaker 2: But I thought, boy, I can't think of a single
Speaker 2: dude I went to college with that would do that
Speaker 2: for another person or another country or their own country.
Speaker 2: I can't think of a single guy, you know what.
Speaker 2: I wasn't that guy in college either. But had I
Speaker 2: joined the military, I would have been. We all would
Speaker 2: have been. That's the extraordinary thing about it.
Speaker 1: Especially. That's a lovely way too, to end our conversation.
Speaker 1: I think this has been so much fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you. A real pleasure for me as well.
Speaker 1: Sebastian Younger is the author of Tribe on Homecoming and
Speaker 1: Belonging but he's an excellent writer. His other books include
Speaker 1: The Perfect Storm, War and most recently, In My Time
Speaker 1: of Dying. He also has a substat called Tribe with
Speaker 1: Sebastian Younger. Links to all of those are in the
Speaker 1: show notes. This episode was produced by Ryan Schweikert, edited
Speaker 1: by Lydia Jane Kott. Sound designed by Jake Gorski. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Costanza Guyardo. Original music by Eric Phillips.
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks, as always for listening.