consultant jost rodata recounts the history of the hotel including the scandal connected to its name and shares stories of many of its notable residents. subsequently earning a ph.d. at cambridge university. best selling author michio kaku looks at innovations preparing man kind for space exploration in his latest book, "the future of humanity." and an award winning journalist reports on the growth of the white nationalist movement in america in "everything you love will burn." look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2. the

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> trained to on a robbery committed by his cousin and other -- >> a very eventful and wonderful day so far at the savanna book festival. you're at the trinity united methodist church united methodist church which has been our venue here all day long. we feel- very fortunate to have this space for the 11th annual savanna book festival. this venue hasy been made possible by the generosity of jackie mary romanos. my name is roger smith and at the pleasure of serving as a

volunteer for the savanna book festival and i'm delighted with your participation. the savanna book festival is presented by georgia power, david and nancy st. john, the sheehan family foundation and the american pet suing. we would also like to thank our wonderfuler literati members as well as individual donors whose contributions have made in the past and continue to make saturday at the savanna book festival a free and public event. inueor fact, 90% of the revenuer the book festival comes from donors just like rs you. it's a great pleasure to thank you for your s support. before we get started, let me to go for housekeeping details for you. first of all immediately following the presentation are author, trained to come will be the book signing venue where he will be glad to talk with you a little further into stine books you have purchased the savanna book festival.

please take a moment right now to make sure that your cell phones and other electronic devices are turned off or in the silent mode so that we won't have electronic disruptions during the talk. if it's your intention to take photographs during the presentation, make sure that the flash on your phone or camera is turned off. during the question-and-answer portion after the presentation today, i ask that you raise your hand if you have a question and give one of our ushers in a couple questions to get to you. it is important that you hold a microphone when u.s. or question , otherwise viewers on c-span and people in the audience will be unable to your question. also, when you have it in your hand, make sure that your question actually is a question rather than a statement or a story. our author today, ben blum is here courtesy of the generosity of villainy in a while.

ben blum holds a phd from the university of california berkeley as well as an msa infection from new york university where he was awarded "the new york times" foundation fellowship. his debut book in subject for today's talk is his 2017 book entitled "ranger games" appeared restraint and give anyone savanna welcome to "ranger ben . [applause] >> thank you so much for having me here. i've been strolling around savanna all day with my wife and six-year-old daughter and i have to say i think every city should be required to have a niceum little monument every two boxes you're walking around. it's perfect for strolling around. more than anything it's perfect for hunting pokémon and pokemon go which is what our daughter is most excited about. we've been really enjoying the

spanish mosque in regency architecture. it takes place about four hours a of here were pending from a different site of church. so you might be forgiven for thinking that this is a book about war, but it's not actually a book about war. the cover does have soldiers on it in the subtitle, but "ranger games" was about a lot of things on the periphery, it's about family, it's about the way good intentions go round and maybe more important than anything it's about growing up. it is about the beautiful illusions that propel us to follow our dreams in the way that those solutions can crumble as we get older often making space for something, but sometimes reeking some major havoc on the way.

so "ranger games" is the true story of my cousin, alex, whom i grew up with in denver, colorado. we were both kind of weird kids growing up into phd you heard about was not in english or journalism or anything that would have been remotely helpful to writing this book. science. computer osha can take a math nerd i was a little kid. for halloween i dressed up as a jacket featuring company called star to anyone who knows what that is. but alex was in his own way just as weird. he was obsessed with military from a very young age. absolutely fascinated with all things are made. he always had his nose buried in a book, but the books he was reading stacked up on the shelf next to mine. he was into band of brothers from the time he was 10 years

old. "black hawk down," red badge of courage can any military drumming he could get his teeth into. and so, we started hearing from alex when he was a kid that he wanted to be a soldier when he grew up. ack common dream for a young bo, but he really stuck with it. his freshman year in high school two weeks into the year, september 11th paved and i think that is the point when his goal started to get a lot more real, a lot more serious. he enlisted shortly after his birth day. by then, his goal was to survive a brutally difficult election programma called the ranger indoctrination program to make it to the elite special operations ranger regiment. he achieved that shortly after his 19th birthday, was posted

to fort lewis, washington in four months later served as the driver and an armed bank robbery organized by a superior in the rangers. he was arrested shortly afterward. he served 16 months in federal prison in shortly after his release started talking to me about the crying. so i spent about seven years all told trying to get to the bottom of how alex come in the goody two shoes of the families who had done cartoonishly patriotic and idealistic as a kid had come to be involved in this bizarre crime. the big question that i grapple with over and over with as they come to this process is how do you support someone who has done something terrible that caused a lot of harm to himself and to others. how do others. how do you help them reckon with what we've done?

i will sort of alternate some reading for some conversation about the b book. i will open with a passage about what alex and i really growing up in denver. from the time we were kids, alex always had a simple dream, to defend his country from the forces of evil in depression. none of us took this very seriously, but him. after school the suburbs of denver he'd run off in his camouflage t-shirt and cargo pants to play command on the canal that will through the neighborhood, laying traps with dried seed pods and hiding behind cocktails to watch joggers chomping yet this to ground its loaded beneath their feet. he rented every army movie cover the local blockbuster carried, played every video game that they weren't very witty -- many

women just men with high men with high take your men with high-tech air trapping of groups from helicopters to the sounds of the unforgettable jingle, and be all that you be in the army paybacks and alex and i barely spoke. not overlap.lds do by age seven and become known in the family as a math prodigy green fields for alex but commie guerrillas i thought burns and spiraling pinecones self manifolds -- i felt super market captures how lazer berks county lifeguard introductions to this quote equations. i was a realized now completely insufferable. human relations were not my specialty. too complicated. by 13 i was taking calculus and physics at the university of colorado. the only real common ground i have with alex lay between the tattered street parking in his driveway for an summer

afternoons he would occasionally scurry around my knees and destroy me, smiling and triumph each time he scored. he was fighters younger but already a buddingou star. our fathers have made efforts of manly education. alex's father norm is the assistant coach of his hockey team with the elite little 10 hockey association including a smattering of praise from the nhl duringat the night to 92 player strike. my own father was a quarterback coach richard washington high school's football team downtown, both raced bicycles competitively in the brutal front range of the rocky mountains, rocky mountains, played pickup street hockey in p warehouse ringed. skied, golf, climb and pumped iron. summers to take his campaign in the foothills, hiking through the canyons from the fission of the tick infested ranchland of our texas relatives. the secular plug centers, jim

shotguns on her shoulders, pointed us towards a point that the other end of grouping enabled us until we squeezed the trigger. it helped it better with alex and with me. even when he was still in school reports of the shining all-american this began filtering in shoveling snow for an elderly neighbor, coaching the kids at hockey camp, defending classmates against bullies at littleton high school. though he was trying he was fined at tournaments all over the country, he became more and more serious about the only thing. it seemed to me as to me as if he had felt pretty made up a toy store display rack and a g.i. joe action figure and now padilla to basic model world of attachments and products were availableer to him. his appeal life of heroic accomplishment, and american life, a triumph. so i knew when i published "ranger games" that some people are going to take it as ans

antiwar vote, but it's really not that either pick your talking to alex in a number of other soldiers, hiking the huge appreciation for their bravery, their discipline, their integrity in the deep carried they show each other. alex are both raced on stories of her grandfather, al senior served in the army in world war ii. he landed in normandy shortly after d-day. and although the stories that what alex then they made to c m, i've also come to appreciate the warrior eats oc passed down through his sons, and the deep bonds of trust with fellow soldiers and the willingness to just keep on going no matter how tough and how painful it can. in the ranger indoctrination program he went through after basic training, he and his buddies entered held together. they out one point had to group in a team of hold telephone poles for 48 hours, taking naps

in brief shifts underneath them. there was today saturday month long process of extreme physical pain and endurance. after surviving the cut, most soldiers quit, but alex did not. he was posted to fort lewis and began learning what his new job would entail as a cherry private under the guidance of the high-ranking soldiers to a combat. the next passage is about the way the formal training spilled over into the moree informal setting that soldiers had in their offou hours. those months were transformative for all but cherry privates. at night and on weekends, they ventured into two, with new eyes. every door was a potential brief

point. a red sun concealing him. every denny's dining room petition dining room petition in two linesti of fire pit civilias looked more and more like another's pcs entirely pay cherry privates watched in amusement as men and women with giant step air huddled over menus, threw napkins over their laps, wiped their children's mouths. one night after airplane hangars, alex and his buddies went to see the new x-men movie at the multiplex highly in all they could talk about wind up in the dark among teenagers who had no idea they were surrounded by rangers was how simple it be a takedown theater. they all try to outdo each other in assessment of the tactical problem which was almost identical to that of the hangar victory exits come of it done for the projection come and pick interior space with a bunch of sheep to hurt, piece of cake. talk of ending spots around tacoma was a reliable way to

show off knowledge and sound hard come a real-world application in the classroom sessions based on satellite photos of al qaeda complexes. whenever they watched haste movies they laughed at how much better they could do the jobau themselves. tabs are fluent in the lingo of tactical planning but the sharper the privates were already thinking about. pac pummels lucky to enjoy the special mentorship of specialistss on the. even after his replacement has bums team later bums team leader come the specialist popped in once in a while with m-16s were shined boots to ask for a ride inin the town. he wasas friendlier to the privates, taking more than a few facilities around tacoma, the blonde seemed to be a favorite of his. sunspots and solar out of his father had given him for use of battalion was cool coming nickname at the transporter after one of his favorite movies in which a dissolution special

forces operator brendan audia eight. blonde try to have his nervousness about the ati stick shift from underwear summer wanted to go, chiles, starbucks, quiznos coming dairy queen,ma supermarket, he made a little less amount of it. where's our insult? i adore by the boot. red zones? behind that softserve thing. he forgot the bathroom. bang, you're dead. all of us were completely flabbergasted by the arrest as youbete might imagine in the fit question that came to all of our minds was wide. like where did this come from? gradually come the story began to filter out. he was enabled to bother him for the first couple weeks and to hand this soldier came and

apparently alex had believed the plans for the bank robbery were just one more special summers little games. a training exercise their suddenly got real. some further reports began filtering outst is a very strane stuff going on alex's head while he was imprisoned in some kind of real illusionary statement none of us could wrap our heads around. later he told us that even after his arrest when he was being held in federal detention, he'd been waiting for some representatives to it. tell him there been some kind of giant mixed up in a training exercise in the pending to iraq to be with his unit where he belonged. when i began talking to alex about the crime, he seemed so fragile and adamant about it, so

earnestt and as his friend and cousin to support him. the more research i did as i started to write the book, the more evidence i found suggestive things were a little more complicated than alex is letting on. it i is right in the thick of al the family tension created as i started trying to get to the truth that dr. philip lombardo, the social psychologist most famous for the prison experiment to it contributed to the legal defense called c alex up and asd him to appear in a special episode of the dr. phil show titled when good people do bad things. the next passage does read this from the taping in hollywood where i was in the studio audience and by the time of this taping that was just a total nervous wreck.

i had this sort of sense that alex might be lying to me in the family but i didn't have the evidence to prove it. the general sense seemed to be alex asoka beeston traumatize by the experience that the real story wasn't accessible to him at all if it existed in the first place. dr. phil's big catchphrase is get real. get real about your problems. i was going to call bs, calling him to get real about this crazy story on national television in front of 3 millionro americans when i was trying to support him and get at the truth. when he got to alex's statement after cheerful prior segments on abu ghraib.

lights come action. dr. phil admitted another cloud of texan grammar, the tilting range than to the horizon. now i have a world-famous psychologist and renowned author dr. phillips embargo here with us today and we are discussing his book, the lucifer effect. understanding how good people turn evil. let me tell you something. you need to read this book and you need to read it twice. he chuckled in the heroic effore impersonating someone who did not just make tens of thousands ofer dollars. sitting stiffly in his chair, one shoulder higher than the other, alternating between the audience. that's dr. phil's last name. doesn't publicize the match. it really is very insightful continued dr. phil. today we talk about when good people do bad things. obeying authority's rule number

one, look at what happened when one former ranger says he thought he was following routine orders they turned with a dr. phil loco and stood in this tiny basement bedroom. the drumbeat started up almost a one. s what followed was a short series of edited together sentences, each of which i had at one time or another heard him saying to me, not one of which was individually untrue. the only possible unifying interpretation was some kind of bizarrear military dilution that none of the civilians could begin to comprehend. the music finished. there is a big cause. okay so dr. phil with a kind of side. he leaned forward in scrutinized

alex renton beneath edward pointing browse. having not been in a situation, all of us are saying now wait, what? he went through one of his patented full body fidgets. so what you are telling me, spreading out 10 of his fingers in an unprecedented double let's get real hand, emotions somewhat akin to whatever electricity from his fingertips into the spasming body of luke scott walker is that you did not know penicillin now begin slapping his clenched fist with the palm of his other hand to punctuate each word, that you were involved in an armed robbery of a bank. after the episode aired, he had been coaching side roads at a locala. ice arena, first chevy n should find since his release

from prison when he was passionate about. hard work finding work as a felon in america. he became better and hard to talk about the robbery. instead i found myself turning to luke elliott summer, the ringleader, a very intelligent, very charismatic guy who had committed a host of acts including stabbing one of hisat co-conspirators in trying to put a hit out on his prosecutors. i developed a strangely close relationship with him. he was upset at the same subject i was obsessed with as a kid feared he was even working with a professor san francisco statet university who seem to think he was a genius about it. in our conversations about morality had been a mystery to him. paradoxically, this made him

much easier to talk to about the robbery thanan alex. alex had such a hard time accepting that he had done somethingre wrong, but he had no sense of wrong at all. it had something to do with some kind of unprocessed guilt that he wasn't letting on about. the next passage is from the one inon person interview in kentucy seven hours straight, living in a dismal little visitation room. we talked briefly about the additional sentences he received for his final two, stabbing a thin dime on trying to put a hit out on the prosecutor.

here corrected me with 10 years apiece and now now is the way it structured that was really to 20 year sentences in a plea deal the government not done the charges to assault with a deadly weapon to commit a crime of violence. i asked where the authorities were willing to do that. i think my prosecutor finally realized i'm -- in same he said. but he sent me to prison anyway. on the last phrase can only his voice dropped into a menacing register. so cartoonish i couldn't help interpreting it as playful like a tango a threatening to blow up the school. he sounded just the way he had a few hours before when illustrating the intensity of his families feeling in a punitive vivid scenes of killing everyone in the room within the cyberthreat. as he waited for the manager to collect him, i jotted a few last

note back into my writing hand. elliott asked me how it's planning to represent him in the book. luke elliott summer, world-famous psychopath he offered grinning. i don't know about that. i almost wish i could c be at dillinger type cared there, ref bank robber type, alas he switched for the last time into his corny singsong voice in the end of a traffic mount to chucky cheese. none on either side of his sister were scattered to the industrial gracious in phrase elliott pointed out and as permitted to stand in case they knew they were married the

previous month. the treaty previous transfer that he was glad to serve for the next 37 years. a reflex i reached out to shake his hand, asking if this is permitted only s after it's too late for surrounding officials to tommy a pleasant and with quick efficiency, elliott was led to the secure door on the fardl side of the totally one-sided conversation and then a concrete bowl just love him and he was gone. as civilians and i am myself a civilian. i have no experience talking to military folks before i started researching the story. we've been taught to interpret the experiences of soldiers through the lens of trauma increasingly in the last 10 years or so. an unspoken code prohibits us from questioning too deeply into what they had to do on the

battlefield. some have really challenge the lens for me. he claims that his dramatic experiences abroad have been a fault for the robbery. he fled to canada where he was born.ac h he claimed he staged the whole thing to gain a platform to protest war crimes he had witnessedst it and afghanistan d iraq pretty claimed to have evidence of this that he was sort of withholding and it never materialized. when i started talking to him, he was still very adamant that had been hish motivation. one of the cure's google search in the hard drive the fbi had recovered, i found no political news coming no protest literature, juster a lot of gun, and speculation about what to do with all the money. so here in the cavalier way that he talked about the people in

the bank made me realize when holding someone accountable means sometimes rejecting their own account. memory is notoriously unreliable when it comes to things we are ashamed of and don't want to remember. it w actually ships around to it added out her transgression way that's very hard to control. the more i research the story, the more i see the true commanders and has to be given more authority is not the voice of the guys whoof do it. alex had his account of the fence, what is thinking of the forces that brought them to thee bank that day, but ultimately the story he belongs to the people in the bank that went through about four years ago in jessica stott, ending in a teller in the bank on that day.

she was delete taylor and she was extraordinarily generous with her time and extraordinarily forgiving towards alex. so the portion of the book that shows what actually happened on that day depends heavily on her account to read a passage from that now. >> with three inches of plexiglass can stop a sphere appeared among fbi agents who work big cases, m ms. truss is e subject of a nonstrategic criticism. i first heard it from a ten-year veteran of of the new york field office. they have abandoned.

the taller shovels money underneath the issue next thing chuckling. it was my first supervisor who told me the only thing that can penetrate a banded carrier is a demand . jessica stott had of course imagine this scenario. if she was ever so unlucky as to find yourself being robbed, she did not intend to shovel money underneath. like virginia, hunter, jessica number two, she had been instructed that a modern banker entre robbery was ultimately widescreen movie. they tucked away in easy reach under the counter which would make the movie stopped. it did however seem a little strange to her, to all of them in fact that in this particular branch there was a narrow gap between the plexiglass in the

ceiling. in 53 seconds, the man in the skipl mask ran through the parkg lot, planted one foot on the countertop and limped through the barriers left in. others cry was more of a surprise than of terror. quickly modulated down to embarrass the help. later she would tell them all the different had been so friendly and welcoming to her all day. this is her first day on the job. she figured this was some kind of initiation prank. it was only when the other growth but there were to see the dark figure rising above their heads the panic telescope through the station than a crushing surge they all went back is on desks and stampeded towards virginia senator tyler. and dove under the last task striking her shoulder played hard on the entire dork of the merchant deposits safe as she went down. heather and jessica number of them aroundp the corner moment later and dove

into. is this a drill she murmured? do they test us on this kind of thing? to surprise a wild giggle, this is extreme for that. if this is a drill, i'm quitting announced jessica number two. u.s. army field manual 9101, and treatments guide to combating built-up areas describes the army's room clearing procedure. a flash banner fragmentation grenade followed by a four-man preaching team. while the team members move toward their points of domination, they engage all targets in their sector. because the soldiers are moving and shooting at the same time, they must movies and careful hurry. they do not crash with total disregard for any obstacles. obstacles in the facility

included a promotional display for mortgages that they phobia voters than in the middle of the lobby, a water crisis hot coffee on the line, it's probably could play table covered in rambo box in the corner and an array of polyester belt paid out between waste extensions within which thronged decidable afternoon crowd ofas the four men in ski masks and sweatshirt now breaching the door had been dissuaded from grenades by scott burton who had assured even if he was crazy enough to do this thing come a flash bang was just completely insane. but they did move towards their points of domination was careful hurry. but this fully automatic ak-47 and a banana t clip and a 37 points 62-millimeter round held at the shoulder, and i'm off to the rear door with another ak-47 or two vineyards or with an

ak-47 in duffel bag full of spare ammo clip and robertson to their cubicles with a springfield nine-millimeter pistol under slung flashlight. according to conventional tactical break down, the banded barrier was not an obstacle. it was architecture coming the only entrance behind it was a locked reinforced door at the end. after breaching at this point,, after 9101 dedicated to buy to leapfrog pattern. infantry were not posted third-quarter shapes based without sufficient manpower. for rangers however regular integer field manuals with the geometry of mathematics strategists rife with simplifications chosen for teachability, blind to the way in which axioms might usefully

bad. theyst man whose body was now twisting sideways to sort through the gap between plexiglass and feeling, one gloved hand planted for purchase committee of for purchase, the other holding a nine-millimeter glock with laser sight with luke elliott summer. jeff stotts, flat on her back amid the smell of carpet and computerr wires in the teletype kept feeling that same urge to giggle. the trappings of her new professional life lived at unreachable heights, jurors, office supplies, fluorescent light commend the underside ofrs virginia's school. someone's leg splayed across her chest. the breath of the taller she was supposedly supervising came fast and close all around her. seconds pulled out like taffy. the lobby ring with cries,

thumps, shallots and then a loud metallic paint, which sparked it ford you desperate that there's no way better than a gunshot. burge got just as i am nodded towards a silent alarm button under the counter but there had paid she stared at it for a short jan. all she would have to do is pull her arm out cover which her hand across space, extend her finger up in a pair of giant lakes turned the corner into the station. the pile compressed with thea gas. the man in a bulky gray sweatshirt and black ski mask rushed him as he is to stare at them. his eyes were such blue intensity that they seem to go through the eye holes. laserlike spikes in the barrel of the gun in his right hand, dancing and grading red jacks to the torsos and limbs. the image of herself with her arm outstretched toward the reverberated with such insistence that she could barely think he achieved almost done

it. get off the man said. nobody moved. the red edicts are today tingling for such the fingertip of a ghost. i said get out. one by one they scrambled to their feet great demand was large and muscular. as he made to be darker with the fabric or theirhe shirt sleeveso path in each of their chests and turn his voice but suddenly personable. he explained that he wanted his shoulder bag filled with the reason hundreds, no dye packs, no serializedit bills. just had not been familiar with these concepts before working at the bank and wondered where he had learned them. he sounded like a guy her age, calm and. had he come in before? none of this was quite real yet. time he caught out towards the lobby. at a second shot at a hooded figure with an assault rifle by the front entrance.

if this bag isn't: one minute, you're all going to get wasted the blue-eyed man explained to the tellers, emphasizing the point of this kind. now it was real. i'm reality is a big theme in this book. there is the unreality of civilians who mostly see us through big budget action movies or a video games with the realiy of it is given an unrealistic loss. there is the unreality of war two soldiers in training nowadays who go through such detailed simulations about field conditions that the distinction between reversal and shows darts to blur. there's the unreality of reality television, which purport to w give us a nonfiltered glimpse of human drama with the stories are in fact quite carefully construct it.

there is the unreality of luke elliott summer who was masterful at plane and that dangerous, fuzzy space at games and jokes and banter as he slowly brought on the many soldiers involved into greater contact with reality. and then there's the unreality of what alex went through and never fully processed. i have come tot see that as a bg part of what keeps trauma i live inside us, and disengagement from the reality of what we've gone through because the reality is just too painful to process. in all those years i spent trying to figure out how to make alex feel, is in a lot of time thinking about. nowadays of course we have a

much richer understanding than we used to. when soldiers go abroad and have horrible things done to them and do horrible things to others and come back and suffer i from it, they are generally given a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder, ptsd. but it's gradually starting to be recognized at the va but some soldiers are suffering from some in a little different that requires a different kindd of treatment. the term that comes to use his moral injury. you suffer a moral injury when you do witness for become complicit in a violation of your morals, lying, stealing, participating in a bank robbery that you never actually wanted to be a partrt of. and i find this a fascinating moment in the progression of

therapeutic methods. psychologists have not historically been in the business of helping their clients atone for their sins. but that is basically what the moral injury framework is beginning to make some space for her. now, i'm very glad for increasing awareness today about trauma, but in some ways can thu moral injury is even more important to understand. it is very tricky, helping your loved ones deal with their trauma, but it's even trickier helping them deal with their burdens ofof moral injury. how deep thailand when you care for someone who is hurting an attacked from all sides and reliant on you to defend and support them that they really screwed up, and that they need to do better, they need to

change. i think if you can do that hopefully, lovingly, compassionately, it is one of the very high facts ofct life. it took me a long time to come to that is, to that feeling about alex's involvement, but i did in the end confronted with all the evidence i had amassed that called parts of the story into question. i got very, very personal and direct within. it was one of the worst things i've ever done and the result were startling and transformational for both him and for me. that is the true shape. the book, the place where it ends, which means i can't tell you how it went because i don't want to give it all away. but i have come throughgh this process with a renewed hope in the possibility for seaweed in

families that are willing to grapple with some of these dark stories that no one wants to talk about if they really stick with it. so thank you all very much for being here. [applause] and i would love to answer any questions you may have. >> while we're waiting, i fear i've mispronounce your last name, which is breaking rule number one. >> no problem. it is a common mistake. >> the issue of families and participants dealing with notions of moral injury, that is not a new thing are people dealing with for an thank god it

was only a bank robbery and nothing else. but is there any support within the survey's and within the va for people who support the va in support of military, we do live in an area those people. do you think there is any support or do you think there is new support? what can you speak of today? >> yeah, some very encouraging steps. the va has been pilot programs started a couple years ago that they seemed promising early results with a different treatment methodologies for moral injury that involves finding some kind of reasonable restitution for the soldier and there are a few programs out there that brings together both

iraqis and ask any citizens who've lost family members in the conflict and then soldiers who may not know what impact they have had, but some of those connections can be very powerful. >> what are the names? >> i really should have those on the tip of my tongue but i don't. >> do you think the family members come including yourself, people in the service, understand what they are dealing with? >> not yet. not yet. we've seen a lot of trauma stories and i think in part because of the sailor to distinguish between trauma and moral injury that's ended at the very problematic narrative for a lot of soldiers coming back and trying to be integrated into, get jobs, feel accepted by our communities. there's a lot of stigma around

ptsd. we see new stories about soldiers flipping out and committing crimes on base or abroad and that has been very damaging, very good. i think -- i would love to see some more support services for families to deal with this issue. i don't think there's enough. >> how was your cousin doing today in what is he doing if you can give any detail. >> sure, he is doing amazingly well. this secret was eating him up for years. he didn't even think of it as a secret. he was just clenched so tight around this version of the story that he thought exonerated him, did he thought showed his true character and he retreated

further and further from friends and family the harder that he helped about. in a surprising way, confronting him will lead to a kind of dramatic reconciliation with family and he stopped drinking, he started training in jujitsu again, i mean, he's doing really well. he has a good job now. he has like a pit bull named pickles that he does on with the level of affection that would kill a smaller dog probably. he is doing well. he and i have become very close to the publication of the book was as you might imagine very scary for him, but it ended up being quite cathartic i think that he and i have appeared together at a book event in colorado, which a number of our family members were in attendance and there was a very, very intense back-and-forth with

the audience come the most hard-core question-and-answer session that i've ever seen at a book event, but it went really well. >> this is such a personal event for you to go through this whole process and write this vote. but as an author, where do you go from here? >> well, hopefully no more of think robert is by close family members. alex occasionally offers if i am stuck in my career, he could go grab another one if i really need him to. so i do come from a science background. i love science and has gotten very interested in trauma, psychology and therapy. my next book is kind of about, it's a little bit about what you are talking about premise and

state of the airwaves for close family is to heal each other from their trauma, to grow together and to hold each other accountable when appropriate in order to move past some of these things that stick with us for years. >> yes, are you familiar with the fear group out of fort europe, started out among act to duty soldiers, went from just guy stuff as they called it to it but to overthrow the u.s. government. it is forever endearing, always ready and one of them testified in court and they couldn't believe how it got out of hand to the point that they killed one of their co-conspirators and his girlfriend in an effort to tie up loose ends they said. it's one of those things that started out shooting in the wood that night and sort of got out

of control. didn't know if you're familiar with that. >> i'm not. that is fascinating. what year is that? be not 2012. it's called the fear group. >> i will look into that here that sounds very familiar indeed. it's incredible the way the small group dynamics can evolve beyondbl the control of almost anyone in the group, especially in these elite warrior cultures where there is a huge taboo against backing down. you know, one guy jokes about taking down a bank, then you joke about taking down the casino and killing everyone in sight. there is this escalation and if you can't rise to the above will be on terror, you yourself as weak. itac is very hard to back down once he started along that path.

do we have any others? >> i have a quick question if i may. [inaudible] you mention your relationship with alex is a all healed greatt actor of everyone else in your family, particularly his father? is he still with us? >> yeah, he yeah, he is still with us. norm is still kicking and doing this 200 push-ups every morning that he's been doing since he was eight years old. the family have been incredibly supportive through this process. so i began this book in 208,417 insanely long ago like that with the idea of clearing alex's name. i just felt it was so unjust that he was going to spend his life as a convict a violent felon having been tricked into robbing the bank while pursuing what he thought was

extracurricular training that would help him on deployment in iraq. so, in the family as you might imagine very much behind the project. we weres all circling trained to help him out of whatever way we could. and then came the really complicated years, when my story started. w out of thehe lines of the famils and those are difficult times. but at the same time, there was an amazing amount of tolerance to keep pursuing this because i was alex's closest friend and it was clear to everyone that he needed that. he needed someone to work them.h this with so i was worried about publishing the book, but my relationship with norm, you know, the things that end up

kissing people off in your book are never the ones you expect. i saw what is someone going to think about the way up her trail exit are they going to hate the fact that quoted their corny jokes here and there and everywhere else. no, totally fine with everything except for what i wrote about my grandfather, i'll feed you, the world war ii veteran who had inspired alex to enlist, who is the source of so much of the mythology that alex and i grew up t on. i discovered his war memoir in the course of researching this book and learned through reading nott that a lot of what he had gone through a broad was much darker than had been passed down to us. i think this is a common experience for families of these very mythologized batteries in

their history. and not began to make clear that this legacy of trauma and moral injury, much more thatea trauma forehand had played a significant role in making alex susceptible to the kind of influence that this brought him under and i think that deep reckoning with family culture in these intergenerational historyt of trauma and moral injury going back through several wars, and that is something that our family is still processing to this day. [applause] >> thanks,o everybody. >> i want to remind everyone that ben blum will be out signing copies of i his book. we want to thank thank you once again for a compelling story in thank you all for being here this afternoon. don't forget the receptacles come in around containers are there for your dollars so future events but can keep saturday free for everyone. thank you all so much.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> that wraps the book tvs coverage of the live savanna book festival. >> i think most of us because it means losing people we love, but bleeding the writers come especially christopher nick stanton who were writing about death and even with my parent,

things that people want to tell us is to live. like live the best life you can. live it so you don't have many regrets. >> to read the living find that message? [inaudible] we want to put that in the back of our minds. we don't really want to focus on our morality because it's depressing. one of the things he writes in his book is that at the end or even a little bit before the difference between living by weight or just be constantly aware that you have an expiration date. for most of us at the possibility, it is something that lays ahead. but denying people know that every single day is a gift.

normally, ideally i think it would be great if we all lived like that. .. and then let you know immediately following the presentation we're going to have a little reception and book signing in the room on the other side of the courtyard. if you would exit this way through the courtyard so you won't interrupt the flow of the café, please do so. so tonight