Sebastian Junger on the Wonder of Existence and the Complexity of Freedom
The Daily Dad
Daily Dad
4.6 • 630 Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2021
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode of the podcast Ryan talks to author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger about his new book Freedom which details his 400 mile journey along the railroad lines of the American East Coast, how the experience of having children challenges your notions of freedom, how the fragility of life reveals a wonderment at existence, and more.
Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, War, and Tribe. As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world. Junger is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film "Restrepo" was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast. During the week, we bring you a daily meditation of the best parenting wisdom you can find drawing on history and philosophy and psychology and literature to inspire you to be a little bit better at the most important job you have. |
| 0:22.5 | And then on the weekends, I have sort of a wrap-up conversation with my friend, fellow dad, |
| 0:27.3 | and writing partner, Niels Parker. |
| 0:29.0 | We just explore what's going on in our lives, what we're struggling with as parents, |
| 0:32.8 | what we're doing well, what we want to do better, and what we've learned along the way, |
| 0:36.9 | and what we've learned in the way, and what we've learned in |
| 0:37.8 | the last week. So let's go. |
| 0:45.6 | Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Dad podcast. One of my |
| 0:53.3 | favorite authors is Sebastian Younger. |
| 0:56.5 | He wrote The Perfect Storm. |
| 0:58.3 | He wrote a great book called Tribe and his new book, Freedom. |
| 1:01.5 | And Freedom's kind of a strange book. |
| 1:03.2 | Basically, he ends up taking like a six-month backpacking trip across America with some friends. |
| 1:10.3 | He's sort of exploring what it means to sort of be free, |
| 1:14.3 | to be unencumbered by society and its hindrances and burdens. So this might seem kind of like a |
| 1:20.5 | strange topic for a podcast about parenting because the last thing that a parent can do is, you know, pack up and go on a walking trip |
| 1:31.1 | across the train tracks of America. But as it happens, at the end of this experience, |
| 1:37.0 | Sebastian ends up becoming a parent. And so he and I talk about a lot of different parenting things in the interview. |
| 1:45.6 | So we've cut some of my favorite clips. |
| 1:47.3 | I interviewed him over at Daily Stoke, but we took my favorite parenting stuff |
| 1:50.5 | because he ends up touching on a bunch of parenting stuff that I think is really interesting. |
| 1:59.1 | We talk about how the risks you take in life affect the people you love. |
... |
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