I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of

the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.

Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right

now. Everybody should know this by now that when I read a good book or experience anything

that I feel I can share, I want to share it with the world. And I recently read this book called

Tri by Sebastian Younger. You might know him as author of the perfect storm and war and several

documentaries, but it's just a tiny little book tribe. It's called tribe on homecoming and belonging.

And I was so struck by it that I immediately wanted to tell everybody I knew about it. And

if possible, talk to Sebastian Younger. And now you're here, Sebastian Younger, for me to talk to.

You say in the book that for hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have lived in close

knit social groups or tribes that people lived and worked side by side. Their survival was intertwined.

That they provided mutual support. We all did. We shared resources. It protected each other. And now our

modern society is just the opposite. That we live in isolation. That we have fewer chances to

really help our fellow human beings. And we have no guarantee that we're going to receive help and

care in return. That and as a result of that, so many of us are depressed and divided. And in

America, the divisions are only getting worse. Is that why you wanted to write the book?

Broadly, yes. I mean, more immediately, I had spent a lot of time at a small outpost with

American soldiers in Eastern Afghanistan outpost called Brestrepo. I made a documentary about it

in a wrote a book called War. And what I noticed was despite all the combat, I mean, there were

fire fights almost every day, complete isolation from the outside world, real hardship and deprivation.

And despite all of that, it was this strange sense of well-being among everybody. We slept shoulder to

shoulder in the dirt. We, it was very dangerous out there, very little food. And after the deployment,

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