is followed by prime minister's questions at the british house of commons. a commerce subcommittee hearing on the next martial arts industry and concerns about health and safety. ♪ >> this week on q1 day, media entrepreneur and travel writer brian gruber. he discusses his book "war: the afterparty - a global walkabout through a half-century of u.s. military interventions." brian: brian gruber, your book. what is it about? mr. gruber: it is about whether

we achieve the mission when we go to war. all my life we have been in one military intervention or another. in business, when you look at a project, you look to see whether you have achieved your objectives, and at what cost. i want to see through this last -- last half-century of military interventions, partisan politics aside, for our the aside, what happens after the party is over? what are the after affects of war and what are the human and financial costs on both sides? >> when did this idea first start? mr. gruber: my birthday is august 4. two years ago on august 4, 2014, was the 40th anniversary of the gulf of tonkin incident. as sort ofo me bookends that was odd that the cost of the vietnam war and the outcome of the vietnam war 50 years after the gulf of tonkin know,nt -- which as you

president johnson went on national television that day in 1964 to ask congress to approve his ability to accelerate our intervention in vietnam. it was a claim that north vietnamese patrol boats attacked the uss maddox. based on that, we escalated the war in vietnam. that later, many admitted it had never happened. similarly in going to iraq, there were supposed to be weapons of mass destruction. there was supposed to be an imminent threat from iraq. wasnow what the outcome there. i was curious again not whether we should or should not have a strong military or grow to war, but what are the actual outcomes . living in this country, you get a certain narrative and a certain's actual ideas -- a certain spectrum of ideas. i thought it would be interesting to strap on the backpack and travel to the world

and through serendipity and just showing up in places and trying to find out if there are other narratives to have a fresh look at what the real outcomes of these were. brian: we have something of a list of places where you went. it is not the complete list, but reflects the chapters in your book. let me just start with the first one. it is guatemala. i want you to just give us some quick reaction. .e will go through the list what do remember most from what allah? -- from guatemala? moneyuber: i raised through crowdfunding for the project. it was a $10,000 campaign. did, i basically traveled with a backpack, flew from san francisco airport to guatemala city with no interviews, no plans, and just arrived there. , firstla was fascinating

of all because of the story. it infirmed -- informed most of the covert operations that were to come in the years after. that was a situation and will -- and which my airbnb host happened to be a former congressman and guatemala who there when the cia supported overthrow happen. his friends fled into the jungles to become realistically -- to oppose -- to becom ee guerillas. through this whole series of introductions made through him, i ended up sitting for four hours with the former president of guatemala. in that specific country where you can show up and learned just by being in the

right place at the right time and pushing for interviews was a fascinating experience. brian: nicaragua? mr. gruber: an example there, i stayed just a week. there was one day that the three types of interviews happened. one, who was assassinated and really launch the sandinista revolution and the overthrow of the long standing dictatorship. i showed up there and a security guard, to get out. the second time i showed up, this young woman came up and asked way wanted to talk to and i asked for an editor to get it interview with someone who might have interstate information. with a cardcame out of the injured -- the editor in chief. , got in to see the

editor in chief. the second interview was through the daughter of the woman of the man who i met and stayed at in guatemala. there was a series of interviews that ended up with a former 70's to and democracy activist. sandinista and democracy activist. the third act of you -- interview i got through stephen kinzer. he is probably the most respected broadcaster in nicaragua. was reflective of the different ways that i was able to get into see people, and also to understand the costs of which i had no idea how widespread the damage was.

brian: what was the relationship between the two? mr. gruber: she is the daughter. her father was the head of the newspaper. sorry he is her son. he took the other side and actually was part of the sandinista group that close them down in favor of the newspaper of the sandinista party. brian: panama. mr. gruber: panama was fascinating because i have a friend who is a jazz musician. his cousin is a pilot on the panama canal. through the meeting with the exiled president of serrano, i met someone at lunch who is a psion

of panamanian political families . he has two great grandfathers who were presidents of panama. through repeated attempts, i finally got to get on a midnight ride with him down the panama canal. the whole story of panama and our intervention there under president george h w bush has to do with the canal and with our desire to keep the canal. actually physically seeing how that canal threads through the country and what means to the country, interviews with the most important way to do that. one interview was with this panamanian who years before could never have had that job when it was under u.s. control. to get a physical sense of what the canal next to panama was valuable. brian: serbia. mr. gruber: serbia was supposed to be a humanitarian intervention.

i think it was one place where you can look at both sides of that and come up with your own conclusions. in belgrade to a lot of serbians, all of whom felt that the intervention in 1999 in a major european city was indefensible. to inf the places i went virtually every military conflict we have, there is some humanitarian veneer over what our purposes are. specifically in belgrade, there was genocide that happened there. there was potential additional genocide. that was in the kosovo area. an interesting case of trying to see whether humanitarian interventions are defensible, and what people on the other end of the gun barrel think. brian: pause here for a second. did you find people -- did you try to find people in all these we werehat thought

terrible with our intervention and people who thought we had done the right thing? mr. gruber: i went with a completely open mind. gett of all, try to interviews through contacts and making contact. serendipitously through places i was staying or people i met. and then getting interviews. there was a wide cross-section in all of these places. all of the serbians i talked to said milosevic'twas terrible. a year after he was thrown out of office. the issue was -- and in panama as well -- there is a spectrum of opinion whether they welcome does welcomed us in order to accelerate that event or if we were infringing on their sovereignty. i went to all these places with an open mind, trying to

understand what a partisan point of view might be, or be validated, but to look at was the mission accomplished? and what were the costs on both ends of the gun barrel? brian: we need to tell the audience we know each other rather well. andare now 61 years old when you walked in this place, you were 28 years old as our first director of marketing. you did some on-air work for us. this is all new to me. so we can share this with the audience, somebody maybe my age or around there might rub your -- might remember your face and you when you are a host here on our call-in show. recently a commitment said private groups are now constantly breaking neutrality laws in central america and we're overlooking it i providing

privately funded aid to the contras. are you violating neutrality laws? >> it is our view we are not violating laws. the aid we are providing is primarily humanitarian aid. we are providing not just medical supplies, but we are supplying money to buy food, food items, clothing items, things that they are unable to get with their he limited funding that they have now that congress has cut them off. brian: you interviewed him. i don't know if you even remember that. if you were with him today, what would you tell him that you learned about his premise about humanitarian aid versus what you saw in the corolla -- in nicaragua. first it's dangerous to hire 14-year-olds on your network. [laughter] i look very young there. i'm sure the congressman was a

fine legislator. he was lying. brian: he is a retired general. mr. gruber: that was not the case. brian: did you feel that way then? did you know that? mr. gruber: back during the interview? no, i did not feel that way or no -- or know. there was clearly an agenda where jimmy carter was trying before president reagan was elected to support the new government. it was clear they were helping salvador rebels. to be a lot more out there terrien and repressive than they promised. ultimately it came to be people who did not like the contras, but who actively opposed the sandinista government. it was not a humanitarian

mission. it was a mission basically to fight the sandinistas at any cost. from the very beginning, there was military aid given to groups in honduras that were extending that conflict for 10 years. brian: as you did this trip, do you consider yourself a journalist? mr. gruber: that is interesting. i have had some training in university and i hosted some call-in shows. i have done a lot of interviews through products i have done. i was a citizen who was sort of doing an opted of his own good -- an audit of his own government. trying to get a fresh narrative to see if there were new perspectives i could aim from people who were actively there. the word journalist can describe a number of things. in terms of being a paid professional journalist working for an oriole organization -- an editorial organization, no. i was there as my own citizen.

i do not necessarily like the term citizen journalist. i was trying to understand what happened and whether the mission was accomplished. brian: i read that you raised $10,000 from 62 people. was that enough money to send you around the world for two years? mr. gruber: it was a four-month trip. that was a little over $2000 a month. enough traveling very simply to travel for four months. after that, when i wrote, i did that on my own. basically for $2000 a month, traveled -- travel, food, lodging, transport. brian: were you buy yourself all the time? mr. gruber: i was. i had friends once in a while who met up with me in the cities i was in. it was me and a backpack. brian: how often did you take a

bus between countries? mr. gruber: pretty often. i remember one time i was in guatemala, and i had to get to nicaragua. i got on the bus at about 6:00 in the morning on a monday morning. was going toi write and edit on was losing power. i asked right plug it in, and she said they do not have that. i said they have it in your brochure. she said we have it on our brochure come we just don't have it on the bus. that was the longest bus trip i remember. much blew. pretty in southwest asia from vietnam to cambodia to laos, those where bus rides -- those were buse rides. serbia, flew to

afghanistan. iraq happened after the initial four months. to airville as my entry point. that was surrounded by jihadi's entry point.y the cost to get it would have been too high. my editor this january said you didn't go to iraq. , and ied about going ended up going this january as an extension of the trip. brian: how did you dress? to stuff asi tried much of the backpack as i could. when i got to afghanistan, my winter clothes i just left behind. i was just like a backpacker, very simply. there were a few rti type travel adventure close that i was wearing. i think i had one dress shirt.

actually, no. that was an rei shirt as well. meetingld go into a with an ex-president looking respectful, but not even anything like this. i had to explain that to people up front. brian: what was the average cost of nightly lighting -- lodging? mr. gruber: cheap. often in the teens. average cost, maybe $20 or so. brian: what was it like? mr. gruber: there were three types of logic i had. one finding really good discounts on lodging during the second through airbnb. the third through something couch cap surfing -- surfing. the kindness of strangers was extraordinary. brian: explain couch surfing. mr. gruber: it's a website.

when i first use it, the guy was a flake. says a website where people if you're traveling through my town, stay in my home for free. brian: why? mr. gruber: why do people allow that? sometimes they want to learn english, sometimes they like helping travelers. sometimes they want to make friends. they can then decide after looking at your profile and seeing you that it on the site -- seeing you vetted on the site. it is not as reliable as getting an airbnb listing. in the end, i got some extraordinary saves through couch saving -- serving. brian: why would you want to take a chance with someone you don't know? mr. gruber: good question. that could be asked about a lot of things i did. hadou look at someone who been on the site for a long time and there are a lot of reviews

about them, you feel a bit more comfortable. or whathave no reviews are too dodgy reviews, you do not stay there. if 11 people have stayed with them the last 18 months, and they stay with a couple people and you read the reviews, then you feel comfortable. when you show up, if you do not like what you see, then you can go. brian: did you ever go? mr. gruber: i did. in cabo, i could not find a place to stay. two days before going there, i could not find lodging. needless to say, there is not a lot of airbnb lodging in, oh -- in cabo. who used to do translations for the u.s. army officer inher was an the army said i cannot give you lodging, but i will take you up at the airport and take you to a guesthouse and will negotiate for you and that i will help you

get interviews. then a second guy based on a second outreach responded. he was the ceo of an i.t. firm which serviced the defense department and the department of the interior. he said we have a villa in downtown cabo. we have converted it into an office, but we kept to en suite rooms. you can stay here if you want to. love that you are doing. you would have three meals a day here. it is secure. basically after the initial guesthouse for a week, i stayed for three weeks in this villa for free and went out with them at night and he made all these introductions and served their employees food three times a day. anytime i wanted a free meal i got it. that was a nice situation. brian: reza prized by the way people treated you? -- were you surprised by the way

people treated you? mr. gruber: i kind of guests that people would be kind and generous and supportive. i'd involve people's advice because it was better to provoke people and get honest reactions from people. people would tell me not to tell people that i was american and i'll must always did. brian: you say you also told people you were jewish. mr. gruber: there was a scene as a pool in cabo where this fellow was screaming that americans were murderers and occupiers. and then i walked up to him to engage him. he asked where i am from, and i remember my story that i was born in brazil, but grew up in canada. then i said i am an american jew. and then we had a long conversation about religion.

i never felt in harms way while i was traveling. people in the end were extraordinarily kind and helpful. brian: did you have anybody that confronted you during this process that were angry? mr. gruber: i think there were people who were politically angry like the fellow in the pool. when you engage with people sincerely, after the first few seconds it is like who are you? and,u say this to someone oh that you are writing a book and they ask who you work for and you say you are independent, 100% of them will think you work for the cia or you are not telling. it is out of the frame of reference to think that you're just there with a backpack traveling through the country. i think on two scores, if you want an interview with someone, the first thing is be skeptical. in the first 90 seconds or so,

they get a sense you are really there for that reason and you want to hear their story, then people open up and they want to tell their story and that they introduce you to other people who want to tell the story. you meet people, if they oppose u.s. policy and think the u.s. should be out. if in a few seconds they come to believe that you are there because you are curious and open and you want to hear their story and they process that and they accept that, then they might still argue with you aggressively but they will want to share their point of view and want to hear what you have to say. brian: you have a picture of you and your two daughters. where do they live and how old are they? mr. gruber: older than they were when you saw them last. jenny is 33 years old and lives in new york. andrea is 30 years old and she lived in oregon.

she is a trained paramedic and ent and works in a medical facility. she moved back to auburn. as you travel around the world, were you instantly in touch -- constantly in touch with your daughters? mr. gruber: all the time. i think that is one of the things about skype and email and all of the apps that you use is you are able to engage and communicate constantly. once and a while, specifically in, in that situation with andrea, i excitedly said in communicating with this afghan housewife over facebook and she invited me to her home and went to injured use me to her family, and andrea said you are not going there. and i argued with her, and she said no, you do not understand come you're just not going. so i didn't go. brian: why did she want to to go? mr. gruber: there were some

people while i was in cabo who would friend me on facebook, and i would kind of look on their feed and see and ask them how they found out that i existed before i would agree to befriended. at one point, there was a woman zahrad sarai who what -- and had a plausible sounding isolation for how she knew who i was. we engaged in this two week long conversation over facebook talking about what it is like to be an afghan housewife, to have children, to have the taliban cut of her education as a young girl. her husband worked at the bagram air force base. it was fascinating for me. my daughter andrea didn't believe that she was who she said she was. ultimately, she invited me to her home for dinner, and andrea did not let me go.

brian: let's go back to the list of where you have been. also on this list as you just mentioned is afghanistan. below that is indochina. where'd you go inside indochina? mr. gruber: i spent most of my time in vietnam and cambodia, where i wound up living eight. i went to laos briefly. --lew from cabo to finally cabo to hanoi. the border crossing is difficult unless you set it up well in advance. , and then tooki buses all the way down into ho chi minh city, and then from ho chi minh city into cambodia. brian: why did you spend eight months in cambodia? mr. gruber: at the end of the

trip, i wanted to write the book and i was tired and wanted to be by the beach. i went to the cambodian coast and went to a beach and rented a bungalow and started writing had a yoga center there and lived in a yoga center for two months a block from the beach, which was a great experience. it was good for me to live in one of the places that i wrote about and learn more about it. before i returned home, i wanted to get a good part of the book written and really enjoy the cambodian coast and enjoy cambodian culture and a get some consulting gigs from the fall on and so i stayed there a while. brian: consulting what? mr. gruber: i met someone running a newspaper there, a former new york times bureau chief. he needed someone to poke around his newsroom. i came and worked with him for three months.

completed the trip, i did some volunteer work at an orphanage outside. who workedng fellow for the european journalism center some months later, an italian fellow. we kept in touch on facebook. he texted me one day that the european journalism center wanted to take a group of 12 senior eu journalists and show them cambodia and take them to projects funded by the eu and meet with the civil society activists and with journalists, and what i be willing to be the fixer and organizer for the project. after that, they want to do the same thing in myanmar. the project in cambodia, there was an extraordinary factory run by a dutch fellow who wanted to create working conditions and treat employees the way you

would if the factory was in the netherlands. just casually i told them about the book project. he was doing all of this extraordinary work and needed someone to help tell his story. >> things like that were very serendipitous. >> if you can make a list of things he can go back to because you enjoy their company, how long would that list be? >> it would be long. hadt of the conversations i didn't make their way into the book. people they felt comfortable going back to and say, let's spend an evening together? probably 40 or 50.

in terms of doing research for follow-up, about 20 people. when did this project to get underway from a book standpoint? a couple of years ago you said he started to raise money and all that. novel five i did a years ago, coincidentally, on the place i'm living now on because of thailand. i did it myself and did the whole publishing process from publisher to completion. really enjoyed that. what to write more. did you travel writing course in san francisco. to become a better writer, you needed to write more. i wrote a lot as i was traveling. ultimately hired a couple of wonderful interns who

transcribed the interviews because it overwhelmed me to do it myself. while i was traveling, someone on my thesis committee at pepperdine university while i was going for my masters there and studying broadcast journalism. he kept reposting things i was posting on facebook. he volunteered to be a pro bono editor for the project and be a partner through the whole thing. and heed on it together has edited three books and had a invitedp because i was by one of my kick starters to be on a project that we funded at the film festival of this year. i had to get done by then. all of the preproduction work and selecting and putting it all

together i did myself. correctly that your father was a taxi driver? mr. gruber: that's right. >> when was that and where was that? >> for about 25 years in new york city. 1917 so thatn would been in the 40's and 50's. he moved to las vegas and loved it so much. he loves talking to people. he took a part-time job in las vegas to continue it well into his 70's. >> how much of your father are you? mr. gruber: a bit. he loved hearing people's stories and loved engaging with people. said,ghter andrea let's of course he loved being a taxi driver, he could tell the same story over and over again to new people every time you picked up

a fare. he was natural about engaging with strangers. with this project, the biggest challenge and unknown i had was being able to find people who could tell their story in a way ant could illuminate international story. a lot of people wouldn't talk to me in places where there is some resentment because he just came out of conflict. inwhy did you decide to live thailand? mr. gruber: i love living by the beach. i enjoy the travel experience a lot. it was a vivid life experience. i'm single and my doctors are both well along on their own. are both wells along on their own. i thought it was going to live

ierseas again -- i thought if was going to live overseas again , this was the time to do it. i really enjoy yoga and living by the beach. i enjoyed southeast asian culture. i traveled to 70 places that i wanted to settle in one place for a while. like to bei might back here in a month or year. on,icularly the island i am it is a place where it is mostly thai so you are part of the thai culture. it is beautiful and you have all want. ex-pats you you can fly to neighboring countries and it is a wonderful quality of life. >> have you afford to do this? have you saved your money? are you making money as you go?

is it expensive to live in thailand? >> that is a very personal questions, brian. there is the points to that. point are comfort and familiarity more important than exploration and experience. if you're willing to adjust your western standards of comfort and decide what do i really need and want and what kind of overhead can i live on just the freedom that i want. that is the most important thing. if you want an air-conditioned, two-bedroom western furnished placess there for you in a bit cheaper than alexandria or san francisco. that is the first thing.

the second, you have to be wealthy -- do you have to be wealthy? and i chooselthy to do it anyways. do you want to focus on security and on making as much money, putting as much money away as you possibly can? kind of a suitable choice many people make, but do you want to balance that somewhere on the specter compared to following your passions and doing what you want. the third is that you couldn't do this very thing easily years ago. there arehe web travel websites that allow you to find inexpensive places and communicate back home. and from a safety point of view, i can be in bangkok

in an hour and san francisco in 24 hours. you don't have to be rich to do it, but you do have to make certain decisions about your life. one final factor is obligations and dependence. if i had three kids who were in their teens who were dependent on the way life is said, you are not going to do this, or parents or ill. -- i would not be doing this. how long did you say -- how long did you stay in the non--- vietnam? there is an attitude of forgiveness.

i don't know if it is a buddhist thing or a time thing or whether as my good friend said, whether there is an attitude that if you were and capacitance -- a combatant at that time, you want to move on. and you associate the united states with economic opportunity. i kept looking for people who were more angry. like some of the interviews in the book. people were fully aware of the fromrs that were unleashed the ordinance to the whole way the conflict took place. among the people there is zero negativity. they want to engage with the world. they had a state-controlled media. in hanoi inold girl

45 seconds can show you how to get around state-controlled on the internet. they want to engage with westerners. it was surprising to me the lack of resentment that i encountered through my travels and southeast asia. q, how long were you there and when? >> i was there in january. my editor has the best habit -- chapter and he said, why didn't you get to ira q.

i said, why don't you go now. up all thelooked reasons i couldn't go and then i found people saying it was completely safe and everyone can come. even a safe place to be though it is 80 kilometers from mosul. in terms of cost is going to be aq,y expensive going to ir but a round trip flight from dubai for $250 is not that expresses -- not that expensive. now an american can get there without a visa for 14 days. my excuses ran out. i plotted a course and i was therefore 10 days. 10 days.there for >> what did you see? mr. gruber: it was an amazing

experience. ahad trouble finding reasonably priced hotel. in iraq. of airbnb he read my profile and said, here's what is going to happen. i'm going to take you to a guesthouse and negotiate with you -- for you. would evero get you interview you want and i speak here at and curtis and i want to be your translator. arabic and kurdish and i want to be your translator. urdishply wanted the k story told. he took me to some extraordinary places. the citadel is the longest

inhabited place on the planet. he took me to the citadel and the bazaar there. te of thee to the si chemical bombardment of the ku rds by saddam hussein. that was a powerful experience. beautiful mountain drive. we were sitting in the marriott urdishinterviewing a k fighter. in the interview he said my brother is a commander on the front lines between here and mos ul. he said, would you like to visit and interview him? i said, of course i was. he called and talked to the base commander. they called and said be ready tomorrow morning.

we drove through the checkpoints. river. over the tigris we were a half hour drive from muscle -- mosul. samir turned to me and said we we just passed the checkpoints and we're going to take you as a present to isis. a little kurdish humor there. and to bea army base there on the base and to talk to the soldiers who were there about how isis formed and their attitudes towards sunni and shia and their experience through the two gulf wars was extraordinary. >> who do they blame for isis? mr. gruber: it is interesting.

you get different perspectives on things. even when there are conflicting or different perspectives, it helps to give you a broader picture. , there was no different perspectives on isis. whether you were sunni or shia americans.hated the there was a young fella who went to damascus who started the meeting by saying he hated americans. he turned out to be very charming and his father is a simple activist. vil activists. they all say the same thing. iraq and firee havehe bath officers, you who yous of elites

everything about army logistics and the country. where weapons were stored and they had a lot of money. they were the leaders of society. years later, those people are selling pencils or are unemployed. they are cumulative -- they are humiliated. a shia government installed by the united states is marauding their area and they say you all created isis by doing that. before, when saddam hussein was in power, if you were an islamist you were repressed and tortured. there was no al qaeda in iraq when hussein was in power. taking out hussein, there were a few hotties who came from other countries who formed this -- ihadis froma few j

other countries who formed this movement in iraq. you have military officers who are running logistics there. >> there's so much to talk about in this book. if someone wants of this book and all of the interviews you did, how did they get? mr. gruber: it is on amazon. "war: thesearch for after party." on kenneth lay don't get in the paperback -- what do you get in the paperback they don't get on kindle. mr. gruber: or two or three

clean up other things in the book. so you get that. and in the next several weeks, what i don't have on the kindle is photos. by the time this interview airs, the kindle will probably have another addition with photos and bonus content. twitt you have facebook, er, and all that. on twitter the handle would be the grube. and i use facebook a lot more. they can just do a search for brian gruber on facebook. i post a lot on that feed and i rubermedia.com g

where i blogged while i did the trip. >> your sense of humor came through more than once, the one i most remember was on the streets of nicaragua. you were out wondering around one night and the young lady that came up to you. she offered her services. would you tell that story? and he walked a lot. he constantly talk about walking. i don't always listen to people. people with tell me in the tell me- people would in the cities -- there are about 108 bus drivers murdered in guatemala city.

people told me you just can't walk around. ultimately the way that i found people was by walking around and engaging with people and that person with -- that person would introduce me to someone else. and ia week in nicaragua did two walkabouts. i walked out the front door, turned right and walked through the city. 35th anniversary of the nicaraguan police and daniel ortega drove his car right in front of me and spoke. experience of those three interviews i talked to you about. i had to go to granada. i took a bus there and did my when i wasews and

sitting there in the all-time alhambra hotel, it is been there for half a century. late.erviewee was up tog woman kept coming hernd she kept lowering price. my girlfriend at the time, i tex taking her -- i kept , saying, ie price can't resist such a low offer. she thought that was funny. this? did you do how did you do the interviews physically and all that? what did you use? mr. gruber: i wanted to do

video. from the very beginning in guatemala, to make them feel if i was messing with equipment, it made them feel more self-conscious. it was also a production challenge. overwhelming to get the right audio and video in every place. i abandoned the video idea. 2, a macbook pro and an iphone. i would record the interview on all three and i would have a device i put over the bottom of my ipad that was a stereo microphone input that is close -- a stereoviewee microphone and put that is close to the interviewee as possible. most of the interviews were serendipitous.

as long as it could be transcribed or i could hear it well, and that was good enough. if i have an iphone that was close to them, that was enough. difference,eal using it for transcribing versus using it for broadcasting. i try to transcribe it all on my own. i had a friend and then these two interns who transcribed everything. everything --ed have you saved everything? they are on the clouds and a couple of devices. almost all of them are transcribed. >> someone comes to see you and says this looks like it was a lot of fun and you learned a lot. what would you tell them to do and not to do?

mr. gruber: i would tell them to do it. if you have a strong, compelling instinct and you are doing it even for yourself then you probably can and it is less dangerous than you think. probably a lot cheaper than you think. do -- crowdfunding. you need a community of people who you already know if you're going to do a successful crowdfunding. most of the things you see on kickstarter, most people aren't have a network of people who want to support a project. two thirds of the donations i got were from people i knew and the rest was from people on the website. travel is easier than it is ever been. travel costs are easier than

they have ever been. content creation tools. .hat to do, what not to do one, i would encourage people -- if i were to do it again, i would spend a few months in messing with the logistics. i would not have to do the the the and lodging -- i would not have to do it all at once. if you are willing to be flexible, there are so many discount airlines and so many new characters -- so many new carriers in the middle east that want to get into these markets. you can get very low-cost travel. the benchmark that i gave you is, if you want to spend $200 a monthinstead of $2000 a

and travel internationally. that is going to be difficult. if you're willing to wait for are travel ats 2:00 in the morning or have a long layover somewhere or take an airline you may not have heard of or stay in lodging where you decide what are your baseline needs for when you travel. you're going to go somewhere on vacation, you have a certain baseline. youru are traveling and baseline is relatively secure, a dead, and functioning plumbing in the bathroom, then you can be very flexible wherever you go. was foode joys i had was really cheap. it was great and the only two times i got sick during the trip were from airplane food. ande a lot of street food

he can have a beast in -- and vietnam.ave a feast in >> if you had to pick the place where you can live, where to pick? mr. gruber: that is tough. i love afghanistan. i'm not sure i would live there m in though the ima interviewed told me to come back and with there. -- aagua has a new beautiful and developing coastline. any people that like costa rica would like nicaragua. again, the name of this book,

"war: the afterparty - a global walkabout through a half-century of u.s. military interventions." i guess it's been brian gruber -- our guest has been brian gruber. thank you very much for joining us. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] >> to give us your comments about this program, visit us at two and a.org. &a.org.

and view our podcast. week'sou enjoyed this interview with brian gruber, here are some other programs you might like. and zdaines and that -- bazzi talk about their experience in the war. time orwatch these any research our entire video library at c-span.org. journal, washington live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. morning, health care policy reporter stephanie armour and washington post reporter amy goldstein will look at health care changes under the

administration and the republican led congress. theformer administrator for health care finance and top willn discuss the future of medicare and medicaid. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal. join the discussion. >> next, british house of commons leader david livingstone stands in for prime minister theresa may. after that, a house hearing on protecting those who participate in mixed martial arts. at 11:00, another chance to see brian gruber talk about his book "war: the after party." british prime minister theresa may w