Freedom, PTSD, war, and life through an evolutionary lens | Sebastian Junger

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in-depth content if you want to take your knowledge of the space to the next level. At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe.
Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Sebastian Junger. Sebastian is a New York Times best-selling author of Tribe, The Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in the Delmont, and War. His newest book, Freedom, came out in May of this year, and we spent some time talking about it. Sebastian is also an award-winning war reporter and journalist who has covered major international stories around the world.
And he is a documentary filmmaker whose debut film, Restrepo, was nominated for an Academy Award. His other documentaries include Coringale, The Last Patrol, Which is the Way to the Front of the Line from Here, and Hell on Earth, The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS. I've wanted to interview Sebastian for a while. In fact, ever since reading his book, Tribe, which I think I read in 2016 or 2017 And while this is a bit of a different interview compared to a lot of the interviews I do on the podcast, I really want to speak with him a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to talk about his very unique life experience and his philosophy of life, which is actually something I only learned about in the prep for this podcast and became kind of transfixed by. These experiences have led him to write some amazing books, but also have given him kind of a remarkable outlook on life. And in particular, Tribe is a book that I've thought a lot about in terms of my understanding of the importance of community in people's mental health, how it plays into their longevity, of course.
In this discussion, we talk about a lot of things. We talk about his upbringing and how it led him to his career as a war reporter. We talk about the psychology of war and the PTSD that he saw many around him experience. And of course, that he experienced, although at the time, he didn't really understand that that's what it was. And then we talk about his philosophy on life, what having kids has meant to him and how he has parented his kids in a way that I think is a little bit non-traditional. We spoke about his near-death experience. And this is something he's spoken about on other podcasts, but I think here we went into a little more detail. And I must say, this was kind of a remarkable story. We talk about how this changed him for the better and the worse, and how it led to the new book that he's writing on what's going to happen when you die. We spoke about his trauma and his past depression, why he only uses a flip phone, social media as an addiction, the importance of the tribe and the dangers of isolation. We end our conversation speaking about his newest book, Freedom and the Documentary, that it's based on, The Last Patrol. We talk about what it means to be free and how we know when to quit. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with the very talented Sebastian Junger.
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 nevertheless, here we are.

**Sebastian Junger** (3:37)
It's thrilling to talk to you.
When I interviewed you, it was really fascinating. I mean, I loved our conversation.

**Peter Attia** (3:44)
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 the fact that I'm gonna get to sit here and listen to you talk is fantastic.

**Sebastian Junger** (3:59)
Thank you.

**Peter Attia** (4:00)
Where did you grow up, Sebastian?

**Sebastian Junger** (4:03)
I grew up outside of Boston in a little town called Belmont, Massachusetts.