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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.

I sat down recently with Stanley McChrystal, the retired Army general who is a study in contradictions.

On the one hand, he's a military legend for leading the highly secretive and sometimes brutal special operations that turn the tide in Iraq in the mid-2000s.

His stint as commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan ended in controversy when members of his team derisively criticized US civilian authorities.

But talk with McChrystal, now a senior fellow at Yale's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and you'll find a brilliant, honest, and reflective thinker.

I spoke with him recently at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics about his new book, RISC, a user's guide, which is rich with leadership lessons.

Here's that conversation.

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Welcome back to the Institute of Politics, welcome back to the Axe Files. I want to talk about this book you've written, RISC, which is really a handbook for leaders about how to assess RISC and how to deal with it, anticipate it and deal with it.

Before we get there, though, I just want to, we've done one of these before.

So anyone who's interested in deep bio on general McChrystal should go back to our Axe Files of January 2019. I just have to raise this again.

And it came up when we were in there. Several people asked you this. This was how Newsweek described you when you were a commander in Afghanistan.

He eats one meal a day, works out obsessively every morning at five, and is so free of body fat that he looks gaunt. Lately as commander of the war in Afghanistan, he's become kind of a zen warrior preaching that off in the shot.

You don't fire as more important than the one you do. One meal a day still?

Yeah, well, first, call me, stand, David. You know, this is actually a great tactic because I could be an axe murderer.

But people would ask me, do you want me a little day?

Yeah. And so it's kind of a hey, look over here, you know, we actually have axe murders on the axed flyers.

But no, I, I, I do. I started 40 years ago just as a way because I thought I was getting fat as a lieutenant.

And I didn't have the self-disciplined eat small meals. So what I do is I defer it till dinner and then I eat everything I could reach.

I, you know, I was reading that particular paragraph today as I was thinking about this tonight as I was sitting at my favorite delegate,

Tess and Manny in Chicago and I was feeling really guilty about that.

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