Remembering 9/11 Part Two
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Audacy
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Twenty years after Sept. 11, we're giving you a break from the money talk, and instead re-airing an interview we did back in 2017 with retired Admiral William “Bill” McRaven.
If Bill’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he presided over the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Bill was the man who identified the body when it was flown back to Afghanistan and told President Obama that the U.S. finally had their guy.
A few years later in 2014, the four-star admiral and 37-year Navy SEAL veteran delivered the commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin (Hook ‘em Horns!). Little did McRaven know that his address, which spoke to how students could overcome challenges and change themselves, would become a viral hit with more than 10 million views online.
In January, 2015 Bill became the Chancellor of the entire University of Texas system (retired 2018) and was encouraged to expand his commencement speech into a book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Jill on Money Podcast. It's Sunday, September 12th. And today we are continuing |
| 0:09.9 | our interview with Admiral William McCraven. This was recorded back in 2017 after his book |
| 0:17.6 | had come out called Make Your Bed Little Things That Can Change Your Life and Maybe The World. |
| 0:22.2 | If you didn't listen to yesterday's episode, do so because Admiral McCraven really gives us |
| 0:28.3 | some detail about the mission to get Bin Laden and what it was like to actually talk to the |
| 0:33.6 | president about the options. In today's part of the interview, we're going to start with the idea |
| 0:40.3 | that you guys know already, but he really does bang at home. That life is really not fair sometimes. |
| 0:47.7 | And the leadership that McCraven displays and has displayed over his lifetime is just a model. |
| 0:54.8 | So here's the second part of our interview with Admiral William H. McCraven. |
| 0:59.7 | That life's not fair is something that seems to have quite a bit of resonance in your world |
| 1:07.9 | because unfair things happen all the time. And how do you get through those unfair things? |
| 1:12.7 | Yeah, you know, again, when we were going through training, there were a lot of folks that felt, |
| 1:19.1 | you know, if they were the best runner that day, then they would be rewarded for that. |
| 1:23.4 | If they had the best uniform, they would be rewarded for that. There was this sense of if I |
| 1:27.5 | perform well, everything's going to fall into place. But it didn't. And this concept of being a |
| 1:35.0 | sugar cookie, as I refer to in the chapter, sugar cookie was you an instructor would just arbitrarily |
| 1:41.5 | say, you know, McCraven hit the surf, you had to hit the surf, you know, get all wet, then roll |
| 1:47.6 | around in the sand. And so you're covered head to toe in sand. And, you know, there was a time |
| 1:52.8 | when you said, why, you know, my uniform looked good, everything was great. I should be rewarded for |
| 1:57.6 | that. And the point was, sorry, life isn't fair. You're not always going to be rewarded for things. |
| 2:03.9 | And so this understanding is you go through life that, you know, life isn't fair. You have to |
| 2:09.4 | get over it. And you can't spend your time, you know, blaming your parents or blaming your |
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