How does a I even work? Where does creativity come from? What's the secret to living longer?

Ted Radio Hour explores the biggest questions with some of the world's greatest

thinkers.

They will surprise, challenge, and even change you.

Listen to NPR's Ted Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm Tanya Mosley. Veterans Day is tomorrow, and today we feature interviews with and about veterans.

Elliot Ackerman is a former Marine and Intelligence Officer who has become a reflective and elegant writer about

war and its consequences.

He was awarded a silver star for leading a platoon in one of the worst battles of the

war in Iraq and the Battle of Fallujah during urban house-to-house combat.

The citation said his contagious combat leadership and ability to instill this type of dedication is the stuff of legends. In his memoir

Places and Names he wrote about what was going on in his mind during the battle

when his men took a lot of lives while losing members of their own platoon.

In a New York Times review of the memoir,

Anne Bernard described it as a classic meditation on war

and how it compels and resists our efforts to order it with meaning.

Ackerman did five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and was nearly killed at the end of his final tour.

Ackerman has also written several novels and has been published in the New Yorker and the Washington Post.

He's also a contributing writer for the New York Times in the Atlantic.

His most recent article in the Atlantic titled A Knife Fight in

a Phone Booth is about urban combat and what Israeli troops are likely to face in

...