The episode opens with two sponsor reads delivered by voice-over narrators. DR Horton promotes its national Red Tag Sales Event running July 10 through August 2, directing listeners to drhorton.com. Colgate Total Active Prevention follows with an analogy comparing oral health protection to buckling a seatbelt. Both reads are standard pre-content advertising blocks with no host involvement.

Megyn Kelly welcomes listeners to a special July 4th weekend double feature drawn from The Megyn Kelly Show archives. She teases both conversations with genuine excitement: McPhee gets called a 'true patriot badass,' and Redman is described as the most inspiring person she's encountered — someone who, if he doesn't move you, no one will. She then segues directly into introducing John McPhee with his formal credentials as a retired Special Operations Sergeant Major who hunted both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Megyn Kelly opens by asking McPhee about his background, and what emerges is a portrait of a childhood defined by chronic violence and neglect. He describes being beaten daily on the school bus as a freshman and sophomore — fights so severe the school eventually paid for a cab to get him there. His parents, young and often drinking, did nothing. Around age 12, he and his older brother decided they would be better off on their own, and they moved in with a woman running a brothel who was, by McPhee's account, kinder to them than anyone they'd known. He stayed there through most of high school. He describes his mother as a perpetually bitter, mean divorced woman — but holds no lasting resentment, viewing the cycle of dysfunction as generational rather than malicious. His philosophy is simple: you were a victim, fine, what's next? This background set the foundation for an almost indestructible psychological constitution.

Before the military, McPhee worked as a welder and mechanic, fixing semi-trucks and dump trucks from a young age. He always showed up to work on time and earned his own money — a discipline that would carry forward. He originally tried the Air Force because mechanics were respected, but the recruiter offered him an admin position, which McPhee rejected on the spot. He wandered over to the Army, asked to be an Airborne Ranger, and was met with laughter from a recruiter he describes as a fat, bald dullard. The Navy was never in the picture. He wanted action and knew there was more to the Army than what these men represented. He signed his Ranger contract and shipped off to basic training, which he experienced as a kind of comic relief — enjoying the trash talk of drill sergeants, laughing through push-up sessions, unable to be genuinely upset by anything after what he'd endured growing up.

McPhee spent 5 years in the Ranger Regiment before the Sergeant Major started threatening Korea postings, which was enough motivation to pursue Special Forces. He goes through the Q Course's MacGyver-like team challenges, earns his explosives specialty, and then — almost by accident — ends up at Delta Force selection. A friend who served in Mogadishu handed him a yellow sticky note at midnight with a time and field location, talked him into showing up at 6 AM, and McPhee passed. The selection involved navigating vast forest and mountain terrain by map — exactly the kind of challenge at which McPhee excels naturally. He treats the whole thing with characteristic nonchalance: he didn't even know Delta Force existed in any real sense; men who went there just disappeared.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, McPhee was on post at Fort Bragg preparing to go to skydiving school. The first plane hit and looked like an accident; the second changed everything. Like every operator in his position, he knew the phone was about to ring. He describes a flood of emotions — excitement, nerves, everything — but his philosophy was clear: feel a thousand things, just don't get stuck on the bad ones. The original post-9/11 plan was a hostage rescue in Kabul, but that changed and McPhee's unit headed instead to Tora Bora. He was still relatively new — a young guy excited to go, he says, not yet having learned the lessons that would come later in leadership.

McPhee is at his most forthcoming in this chapter. In December 2001, just 10 Delta Force operators cleared al-Qaeda's Tora Bora mountain stronghold in 10 days — killing or routing all of bin Laden's inner circle, his bodyguards, his cook, and virtually everyone in the network. The Soviets never managed it with 10,000 men ^{[1] — John McPhee "In December 2001, just 10 Delta Force operators cleared Tora Bora in 10 days — a mountain stronghold the Soviet army with 10,000 soldiers c…" 29:05 Play} . Bin Laden wrote a death letter believing he was about to die. And then a ceasefire was called, and McPhee says helicopters — belonging to someone he pointedly refuses to name — appeared over the battlefield. He connects the dots coolly: if 10 Delta operators kill bin Laden in the first 10 days of the war, the entire war-on-terror funding apparatus never gets activated ^{[2] — John McPhee "McPhee is convinced bin Laden didn't walk out of Tora Bora on his own — he was evacuated by unknown helicopters that appeared over the batt…" 32:35 Play} . Someone, he believes, had an interest in keeping bin Laden alive and free. He draws a parallel to the JFK files and suggests the current administration might be the first with the will to get real answers about what happened between Tora Bora and Abbottabad.

A few months after the initial Tora Bora battle, McPhee volunteered to fly a helicopter back to Bagram to pick up supplies — specifically Pop-Tarts and beef jerky — for his unit. A senior commander spotted him, asked if he wanted a mission instead, and offered him a solo reconnaissance assignment. The premise was political: a general had forbidden anyone from leaving the base without U.S. eyes on a target first, creating a chicken-and-egg problem. McPhee, technically 'in transit' between bases, was the loophole. For 10 days he moved alone through Taliban-controlled terrain he already knew, passing through checkpoints by pretending to be a mentally disabled local — loud, incomprehensible, and impossible to deal with. He got away with it every time. His target: the man believed to have facilitated bin Laden's movement in and out of the valley. He videotaped the man on his front porch from a passing truck, confirmed identification only later, and learned eventually that the footage didn't lead to bin Laden anyway ^{[1] — John McPhee "McPhee flew from his outpost to Bagram Air Base to restock beef jerky and Pop-Tarts for his team. A senior commander asked if he wanted to …" 40:20 Play} .

When the conversation turns to Iraq, McPhee is surprisingly enthusiastic — he loved it. He makes the case that Saddam was actually a stabilizing force: his inner circle was entirely Christian (because Christians, unlike Muslims, don't seek martyrdom, making them safer to trust), he allowed Christian communities to maintain their own lives and areas, and he kept Iraq relatively Western-facing. Removing him created the vacuum ISIS eventually filled. McPhee then describes the creative manhunting process: pulling every thread, including tracking Saddam's married affair partner's husband using a staged street fight as a distraction for a clean snatch. He found him, interrogated him (everyone talks, he notes — fear and common sense are more powerful than torture), and got nothing useful. Saddam was found shortly after anyway. The Zarqawi years he describes as a high point: the military finally let operators do it their way.

Megyn Kelly presses McPhee on the emotional toll of war, noting many veterans come back traumatized. McPhee's framework is simple and bracingly unsentimental: guys with PTSD are stuck in the last chapter. The story isn't over ^{[1] — John McPhee "They're stuck in the last chapter, you know what I mean? The story's not over. I was under the age of 40 doing all that stuff. Well, I got …" 39:22 Play} . He was under 40 for all of it. The war, he believes, was not strategically worth it in any meaningful sense — but he had the time of his life, and he doesn't apologize for that. He saved lives, he was excellent at something he loved, and that combination kept pulling him back. He also addresses the brotherhood — not a universal bond across all veterans, but a deep bond forged with specific men in specific moments, built from experiencing the best and worst of humanity simultaneously. He describes marriage in the Army as 'being in prison — you can call home but you ain't going there.' He has two kids and doesn't count his age.

In the closing minutes of the McPhee interview, Megyn Kelly asks about his views on the current administration. McPhee is straightforward: he likes Trump and Vance for making long-term decisions rather than short-term political calculations, and he likes Pete Hegseth because his SEAL network friends all love him. His Pentagon critique is sharp and personal — he watched generals make bad calls every day, and when he tried to tell them, they got angry. The hubris of the Pentagon brass, he argues, is exactly the problem, and Hegseth's outsider status is a feature. He jokingly — or not so jokingly — volunteers himself for the deputy of special operations role and asks Megyn to call Pete.

Following the conclusion of the McPhee interview, Megyn Kelly delivers a warm sign-off, noting that McPhee's is part of a Memorial Day archive tradition that also includes Rob O'Neill, Marcus Luttrell, and Dakota Meyer. A DR Horton ad read and a cross-promo for Long Winded with Gabby Windy air before the second interview begins.

From age 3, Jason Redman wanted to be a protector. His grandfather was a decorated B-24 pilot, his great-uncle served in World War II, and his father was an Army paratrooper who first encountered SEALs during his service and suggested Jason look into them. At 14, Redman decided he wanted to be a SEAL. At 15, he walked into a recruiting office at five-foot-nothing and roughly 95 pounds and was chased out. He came back. He was chased out again. He nearly joined the Army Rangers but failed an airborne physical due to a ruptured eardrum, was referred to a specialist who cleared him, found a new and supportive recruiter named Henry Horn, and officially joined the Navy on September 11, 1992 — at age 17, still a high school senior. He's candid that he was a small guy going into training, checking into BUD/S at 135 pounds, but argues that physical size is one of the least important factors in becoming a SEAL.

Redman is precise about what the Navy has learned — and not learned — about selecting SEALs. The attrition rate has stayed at roughly 75% since the program began in World War II, despite significant investment in trying to change it ^{[1] — Jason Redman "The Navy has spent millions trying to boost SEAL graduation rates, but the attrition rate has stayed around 75% since World War II. Two thi…" 2:03:40 Play} . Two things predict success: the no-quit gene (the ability to override the brain's stop signals and keep going when the body is screaming to quit) and the capacity to process overwhelming information at combat speed and make rapid decisions. Redman compares it to what a football coach looks for in a quarterback — technical skills are necessary, but the ability to read the field under extreme pressure is a different and rarer gift. Many candidates have the physical profile but shut down when the information load exceeds their processing capacity. That, he says, is the real filter.

Hell Week runs Sunday to Friday with 2-3 hours of total sleep — and Redman experienced it in March in San Diego, with water temperatures in the high 50s. The most striking moment: Boat Crew 1, who had won every evolution leading up to Hell Week and were considered the class gods, all quit on Tuesday night during Steel Piers — a brutal evolution where candidates are forced into the freezing bay in their underwear, yelled at to find compass directions with no compass, and repeatedly dunked in darkness for 4-5 hours. The sight of those men sitting warm in a van with coffee and blankets, the easy escape available to everyone, is one of the most powerful psychological tests of training ^{[1] — Jason Redman "Boat Crew 1 won everything leading up to Hell Week — they were the class gods. On Tuesday night of Hell Week, during the brutal Steel Piers…" 2:30:44 Play} . Later, on Day 4, Redman was hallucinating chain-link fences and concrete walls in the middle of the ocean. His swim buddy saw a witch standing in the water who was still there when he looked away and back. Both kept going.

In one of the most quotable passages of the episode, Redman addresses the cultural softening of America. He's just finished reading about the 1879 Arctic expedition — men cutting frostbite off their own feet and continuing to march — and acknowledges he's not sure how he would have fared. The lesson he draws is stark: every generation must deliberately practice hard things, or it loses the capacity to endure when it matters. You cannot flip a switch to be tough on demand; the switch has to have been built through thousands of small hard choices over years ^{[1] — Jason Redman "Grit and I like to tell people the overcome mindset is not something you can just flip a switch and say, oh, I have to be tough right now. …" 2:15:07 Play} . He then calls out the victim mindset as the real pandemic: political leaders across all spectrums are actively convincing people they cannot save themselves and need government rescue, which he regards as both false and dangerous. America was built on self-leadership, grit, and resilience. We are currently moving backwards.

Redman entered the SEAL teams from a peacetime Navy and then commissioned as an officer, believing he was God's gift to leadership. He was wrong. He arrived in Afghanistan in 2005 with ego, outdated tactics, and a drinking habit he had developed to cope with his eroding credibility. His sister platoon — the men on the helicopter that was shot down in Operation Red Wings — were killed just before his troop deployed. His own deployment began in that grief. His ego continued unchecked, and on a mission in September 2005 he made a call based on his own desire for glory rather than the mission and the team. No one was killed, but it nearly ended his career ^{[1] — Jason Redman "I put a gun in my mouth and I started to pull the trigger. But fortunately, I think God intervened. I looked across at the desk and there w…" 2:18:12 Play} . His commanding officer deliberated overnight. Redman returned to his room and put a gun in his mouth. He started to pull the trigger. He looked up, saw a photo of his wife and children, and heard a voice — which he attributes to God — asking what he was doing. He put the gun down, found the Special Operations chaplain, and decided to fight for his career and his life.

The commanding officer who had every reason to expel Redman chose mercy and growth instead, sending him to Ranger School. Redman arrived with residual ego and failed the land navigation course, then lost his composure with instructors and quit — the only thing he has ever quit in his life. A Ranger Colonel who called a SEAL mentor on Redman's behalf put him on the phone with someone who had known him for years and delivered the message that became the core of everything Redman now teaches: people will follow you if you give them a reason to. That's it. He was told to go back into Ranger School in the next class, crush it, and come back a different leader. He spent a month picking up trash at Fort Benning — the most humbling experience of his life — and graduated Ranger School with a new 3-rule leadership framework that defines his speaking career today.

Deployed to Fallujah in May 2007, Redman's team was executing a mission targeting the number one al-Qaeda leader in Anbar Province. They took down an initial building, found evidence of recent occupation but no target, and spotted activity at a building 150 yards away. Redman led 9 members — 7 SEALs and an interpreter — toward it. What they didn't know was that the target's 15-man security detail had set up an ambush line in the vegetation across the street. The team walked straight into it. Redman's medic was hit first; another SEAL was shot multiple times pulling him back. Redman, still forward, was stitched across his body armor, shot twice in the left elbow, took rounds off his helmet and gun, and was then shot through the face — the bullet traveling through his face and taking out his nose, cheekbone, orbital floor, and jaw before knocking him unconscious. He was pinned down 45 feet from the machine gun. His teammate Jay Ali Austin coordinated three requests for an AC-130 danger-close airstrike, finally accepted the onus himself on the third attempt, and the airstrike silenced the enemy. They called in 8-9 more fire missions before medevac arrived ^{[1] — Jason Redman "In Fallujah in 2007, Redman's 9-man team walked into a carefully executed ambush by al-Qaeda's top Anbar Province commander. Redman was sho…" 2:21:30 Play} .

Redman clung to a 90% survival statistic as he drifted in and out of consciousness on the medevac helicopter. He made it to Baghdad, was stabilized, and flew to Germany. He woke up unable to speak — trached, wired shut — and asked for paper. His first three questions: are my guys okay? Has my wife been notified? And: do I still look pretty? (The answer was no, his team confirmed — getting shot in the face was probably an improvement.) Within a week, overheard conversations about what a shame it was to send young men to war and have them come back broken triggered a moment of clarity. Redman asked Erica for pen and paper and wrote the sign ^{[1] — Jason Redman "Attention to all who enter here. If you're coming in this room with sadness or sorrow, go elsewhere. The wounds I received, I got in a job …" 2:46:30 Play} : attention to all who enter here — no sadness, no sorrow. The wounds I received, I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, defending a country I deeply love. I will make a full recovery. His teammate put the sign online, a New York firefighter wrote about it, and it went viral. Secretary Robert Gates wrote about it. Michelle Obama cited it twice in Becoming and sent a handwritten note. President Bush signed it at the White House. It now hangs in the wounded ward at Walter Reed.

Redman's recovery was long — nearly 4 years of surgeries for battlefield wounds that were dirty and infection-prone, plus the psychological work of rebuilding identity. His wife Erica is the unsung hero of the story: she became his nurse, ground up medications for his feeding tube, cleaned his trach, and raised three children while managing his care. She never once asked why he chose a job that led to this. Redman kept the kids' schedules stable, refused to let them visit until he could walk into a room on his own, and gave them the gifts they'd been wanting when they finally reunited — a move orchestrated by Erica to make the reunion joyful rather than frightening. His youngest daughter, only 3, became his constant companion during recovery and watched cartoons with him in bed. That unconditional love, he says, was among the most healing things he experienced ^{[1] — Jason Redman "SEAL divorce rate: ~90%: Jason Redman notes that Navy SEALs have nearly a 90% divorce rate, and wounded warriors face an even higher rate o…" 2:41:25 Play} . He now speaks professionally on leadership, resilience, and the Overcome Mindset to corporations, service academies, and the general public, and has written two books with a third — an 'Invincible Marriage' book co-authored with Erica — forthcoming.

Redman got personally involved in trying to evacuate Afghan interpreters and allies during the chaotic August 2021 withdrawal, working with a group that included Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, Chad Robichaux, and Tim Kennedy. He witnessed firsthand the disorganization and the government's apparent singular focus on getting the military out while leaving behind U.S. citizens and processed visa holders. He calls it a repeat of the Iraq withdrawal mistake — only exponentially larger — and traces a direct line from the Iraq power vacuum to the creation of ISIS. Most importantly, he argues, the message sent to potential future intelligence partners globally is devastating: work with us, risk your life, and we will abandon you when it gets inconvenient. American intelligence collection will suffer for decades. Megyn closes by reframing the whole 20-year effort: the troops kept America safe after 9/11 for two decades, and the stain belongs to the leadership, not the men who served.

The final chapter consists of two closing sponsor reads: DR Horton promotes its national Red Tag Sales Event running from July 10 through August 2, and Colgate Total Active Prevention returns with its seatbelt analogy for oral health. These mirror the opening ads, providing symmetrical commercial framing around the double-feature interviews.