Badass of the Week

Six surgeries. Nearly eighty pounds lost. And a touchdown that deserves its own damn movie.

Britt Redman was a high school wide receiver in the middle of a playoff run when advanced testicular cancer turned his world upside down. Football gave way to chemotherapy, operating rooms, and the brutal work of getting through another day. After everything his body endured, returning to the field would have been remarkable. Britt made it all the way back to the end zone.

This week, Ben sits down with Britt and his father, former NFL quarterback and Super Bowl champion Chris Redman, for a comeback story with considerably more at stake than a scoreboard. They explore the terror of the diagnosis, the faith and family that helped carry them through treatment, and what happens when a dad who has faced NFL defenses encounters something he can’t beat with a better play call. Along the way, Ben connects Britt’s story to medieval warrior king Baldwin IV, and the Redmans discuss Grit Like Britt, the foundation bringing gaming consoles—and some much-needed escape—to kids facing cancer. Bring your game face. Possibly also tissues.
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History remembers Catherine de’ Medici as the black-clad poison queen of Renaissance France—an Italian schemer who kept a vial in one hand and a dagger in the other. The truth is messier, bloodier, and way more interesting.

Orphaned as a baby, married off at fourteen, and dropped into a French royal court that treated her like a foreign spare part, Catherine survived humiliation, dynastic disaster, and one spectacularly fatal jousting accident. Then she did what every sidelined queen mother dreams of doing: she took control.

With three of her sons wearing the crown in succession, France exploding into religious war, nobles plotting coups, and assassins lurking around every palace corner, Catherine fought to keep her family on the throne and the kingdom from tearing itself apart. Ben and Pat wade into the legends of poison, prophecy, political murder, and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre to ask the real question: Was Catherine de’ Medici a murderous monster, a master political survivor—or simply the only person in the royal family who knew what the hell she was doing?
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On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami turned the Japanese city of Ishinomaki into a freezing, debris-choked nightmare. Most people would take one look at that and head for the hills. Hideaki Akaiwa grabbed a wetsuit and diving gear and went straight in. He fought his way through flooded streets to rescue his trapped wife, went back out to find his missing mother, and then kept searching for neighbors and survivors. This week, Ben and Andrew tell the incredible true story of a regular guy who responded to an apocalyptic natural disaster with courage, stubbornness, and the kind of action-movie heroics that would make Hollywood say, “Okay, maybe dial it back a little.”
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On today’s episode, Ben is joined by special guest Paul Jacobs to tell the story of Karl von Müller and the SMS Emden, the German warship that unleashed absolute chaos across the Indian Ocean during World War I.

Outnumbered, outgunned, and thousands of miles from home, Müller used speed, deception, and sheer audacity to capture or destroy dozens of Allied ships, cripple vital shipping routes, and send warships from five nations scrambling to hunt him down. From sneaking into enemy harbors in disguise to the Emden’s explosive final showdown with HMAS Sydney, this is the story of one captain, one cruiser, and one of the most legendary rampages in naval history.
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During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, First Lieutenant Brian Chontosh and his Marines were caught in a coordinated ambush on Route 1. With the road blocked and fire closing in around them, Chontosh ordered his Humvee toward the attack, broke through the enemy’s defenses, and led a fight through the trench line -- an extraordinary action that earned him the Navy Cross.

But an award citation can’t tell the whole story. In a candid conversation with Ben Thompson, Chontosh discusses the training and Marines who carried him through that day, the danger of believing his own “badass” mythology, and the battles that followed him home. He also shares how learning to accept help led him to create the Big Fish Foundation, which works to support veterans before they reach a crisis.

It’s a powerful conversation about courage, leadership, vulnerability, and the long road home from war.
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