042 - Sebastian Junger
“I want to find out what’s true.”
Sebastian Junger -- war journalist, documentary filmmaker, and author of Tribe, The Perfect Storm, War, and most recently Freedom -- joins Jason and Emily for Episode 042 about calculated risks, seeing the world as it is, the service of journalism, and doing hard physical things to feel differently about oneself.
Junger grew up in the suburbs of Boston, a childhood that didn’t feel hard or like real life. His father was the survivor of two wars, a “rationalist with deep empathy” and a pacifist who hated fascism enough to encourage his son to sign his selective service card to potentially serve in another WWII. Instead, Sebastian served as a war reporter and saw his role as providing critical information and the truth about atrocities and conflict. He found the role, and risks, intoxicating as well as noble.
In 2007 Sebastian embedded with the Second Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team of the U.S. Army in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan for Vanity Fair. There he met award-winning photojournalist Tim Hetherington and they created the documentary “Restrepo” which was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Sebastian talks about the bonds created through those experiences, with the soldiers and with Tim, and the parallels between service in the military and journalism.
In 2011 Tim was killed in Libya covering the Libyan civil war -- an assignment Sebastian was also supposed to be on. Sebastian talks through his PTSD, guilt, depression and the spiral of loss through deaths, miscarriage, giving up war reporting, and his divorce which led him to “The Last Patrol” -- a 400mil walk along the railroad tracks between New York and DC -- which helped him “climb out of the hole.” He talks about pain as a motivator for improvement, the potential trap of solutions and being open to knowing when the end has come.
His new book Freedom was born of that “weird marginal existence” and he explores the tension between needing society/community and having freedom -- both evolutionary and today. His new adventure is as father of two daughters -- seeing the magic in that reality -- and navigating the tension between the modern inventions which saved his life last year and the traps of technology.
Links:
“The Last Patrol” on HBO
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