60 Minutes - Sunday, August 27, 2017

Episode Date: August 28, 2017

Mike Bloomberg says most of his fortune will go to his foundation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door.

A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Did you enjoy your time as mayor? Loved every minute of it. Piloting his helicopter, Mike Bloomberg gave us an aerial tour of the city he helped shape. But most days you'll find him in the gleaming, Oz-like tower that bears his company's name. We asked him how he managed to accumulate $47 billion, why he decided not to run for president, and how he's getting along with the new president

considering their testy past. I'm a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one. Have you spoken to Trump since he's in the White House? An average of 70,000 men and women pass through Cook County Jail each year, many more than once. What percent do you think here really shouldn't be here? I would suggest conservatively that half of the people here in the jail shouldn't be here. The county sheriff, Tom Dart, says the jail has become a dumping ground for the poor and mentally ill. If they're going to make it so that I am going to be the largest mental health provider, we're going to be the best ones. We're going to treat them as a patient while they're here. We are going to think differently. Greg Glassman

hardly looks like an exercise guru. There's no hint of ripped muscle underneath his untucked shirt, but he is widely considered the most powerful man in fitness today. If you like metrics, you like money, we're the fastest growing large chain on earth. We have broken all records. In 17 years, the king of CrossFit has created the largest gym chain in history. She was meant to look like that. That's what nature would have carved from her a million years ago, or she'd have been eaten.

I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities

talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. The name Bloomberg is a worldwide brand that could refer to a number of things. Cable channel, a radio network, a news service, a magazine, or a 75-year-old former mayor of New York who founded the Bloomberg Financial Media Empire and flirted with running for president. According to Forbes magazine, Michael Bloomberg is the 10th richest man in the world and one of a growing number of extremely wealthy people who plan to give most of their money away,

releasing a torrent of private philanthropy that is already having an impact on the country. Of that group, Michael Bloomberg is one of the most interesting and straightforward. And this past spring, he agreed to talk to us about how he came to accumulate $47 billion and what he hopes to accomplish by giving it away. Oh, it's more money than anybody could possibly spend on themselves. The issue is what can you do with it? You can't take it with you. Although I have a cartoon at home of a guy on his deathbed in the hospital with the rails around and his family looking down like vultures. And he looks up and he says, I know I can't take it with me, but I can take the access code. At 75, Mike Bloomberg, as he likes to be called,

is a long way from retirement. Most days you'll find him in the gleaming Oz-like tower that bears his company's name, a high-energy, egalitarian workplace at the crossroads of media, information technology, and capitalism. This is an incredible building, office building. It looks like, I don't know what it looks like. What I'm trying to do is to create excitement, so people say, my goodness, what's going on here? There's something different about this company, the employees, you want them to get psyched. And it's a chance to meet each other. My job is to get people to work together. With free food and no offices, even for Bloomberg, this might be considered one of the world's great corporate headquarters, if it weren't for the fact that Bloomberg LP is not a corporation. It's a limited partnership, a private company, and 85% of all of this and a lot more belongs to Mike Bloomberg.

Is this a technology company? Is it an information company? Yes and yes. We try to get information people need, store it, present it, let you use it. When Bloomberg started out as a clerk on the Wall Street trading desk of Salomon Brothers in 1966, he thought there must be a better way to get up to the minute financial data than combing through the Wall Street Journal. He spent 15 years trying to convince his partners at Salomon that computers could be the answer. And when they fired him in 1981, he used his $10 million severance to hire three young engineers and launch his startup. When I started the company, it was before PCs

were invented. I know you don't think there was a day. We literally built our own, and the internet hadn't been invented. So we created our own. We'd rent a telephone line and then had a device that let you branch out when you got to Chicago or wherever. Ever since then, Mike Bloomberg has pretty much done things the way he wants to. Where else have you seen a curved escalator? We needed a curved one that fit into the space, and the architect said, doesn't exist. And I said, you go to Japan, you'll find a curved one, and they did, of course. Bloomberg has a degree in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and it is that discipline of an engineer that defines his character and personality. Detached, analytical, pragmatic.

These are some of the words that people have used to describe you. Have you seen all my relatives? No, no, no, no, no. I don't think so. Well, maybe. Depends whether it's good or bad. Blunt. I tend to be reasonably blunt, maybe a little bit too much.

But I just always respected people that tell the truth. And I've always wanted people to tell me the truth. Self-confident. Reasonably self-confident, been successful. Don't think that I'm infallible, will always make mistakes. Arrogant. You've certainly heard people say that. I suppose I come across that way sometimes, but my mother would have told me don't. Even his late mother would probably forgive him for the occasional lapse of humility,

given the size and the scope of the Bloomberg empire. Nearly 20,000 employees in 192 locations around the world, gathering, writing, transmitting, and analyzing information that will move markets. These people are doing one-minute radio business updates for 100 different radio stations around the country. But the real money and most of the profits come from a mysterious piece of equipment known as the Bloomberg Terminal that sits on the desks of titans and traders... This is my desk.

...all over the world. Sound, pictures, graphics, tabular data, different ways to look at the markets. It's really a customized keyboard and closely guarded proprietary software linked to a private computer network that provides a volume of data that's unavailable anywhere else. Live streams from 300 stock exchanges, curated tweets, the exact location of oil tankers around the world, the kind of stuff 325,000 professionals pay $25,000 to rent for one year. If you do the math, it adds up to about $8 billion. But let's say you want to look at a stock, General Motors, for example.

After using his fingerprint to log onto his account, Bloomberg gave us a peek behind the curtain. On the left are all of the companies that sell parts to General Motors. And on the right are all of the companies that buy General Motors output, generally cars. The different indices that General Motors stock is in. Here are the other companies that compete with them. Here are the big holders of their stock, analysts that follow it, who's on the board, who works in the company. Why has nobody else done this? For an individual company to do it, it's probably too expensive unless it's your business. This is our business. Bloomberg has not only left his mark on Wall Street, he has left it on New York City. He took us up in a

company helicopter he was piloting to have a look. The Gordia helicopter, November 6th, Mike Victor. The thing he likes best about flying, he said, is if you don't follow the rules, you die. By 2001, Bloomberg was already worth $5 billion and looking for a new challenge. He wanted to run something big like the U.N. or the World Bank. He settled on New York City, taking leave from his job and spending a quarter of a billion dollars of his own money to get himself elected mayor three times. Here is the New World Trade Center.

You can see the big, tall building and others. The first time he was elected was just two months after 9-11. He managed the resurrection from the rubble. Right through there you can see the Oculus, which is this big shopping thing. This whole part of Manhattan before was sort of desolate. After 9-11, we now have 25 hotels. Now it's a bustling residential community as well. He saw the city through the economic crisis of 2008.

And while he was mayor, development and construction boomed, and the crime rate dropped. Hudson Yards, which is this big development, phenomenally successful development, created an enormous amount of jobs, an enormous amount of new office space. He was sometimes ridiculed for his public health war on smoking, trans fats, and soft drinks. But he points out life expectancy of New Yorkers increased by three years while he was in office. Did you enjoy your time as mayor? Loved every minute of it. It's a wonderful job. The challenges are enormous, but you have a great opportunity to make a difference. He was successful enough in the job to twice consider running for president,

but he was never able to find a solid constituency in either party. Last year, he thought about running as an independent and was prepared to spend a billion dollars of his fortune to get elected, aides say. He had even decided on retired Admiral Mike Mullen as a running mate. And you came close, you looked at it, but you didn't pull the trigger. If I thought we could win or had a reasonable chance, I would have done it. It would be totally unlikely, very unlikely that an independent could win. And in my case, I was mayor for a long time. People know where I stand. I couldn't pretend to be something I'm not. For the Republicans, I'm pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-immigration. That's a good start there. You'll

never get their nomination. On the Democratic side, I believe in teacher evaluation. The big banks, we need to help them rather than just keep trying to tear them down. Those are not particularly things that will help you get the nomination. He campaigned hard against Donald Trump, his New York rival in the general election, calling him a con man at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. I'm a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one. Have you spoken to Trump since he's in the White House? Yes, once I called him and congratulated him. We joked about my speech in Philadelphia. And before he finished the conversation, he gave me his personal phone number, his cell phone. I haven't called him. I don't know whether he'd answer it now, but

I hope he does a good job. You're not going to run for office again? Well, I'm 75 years old. It'd be an age issue, I suppose. I've got plenty of things to do, and maybe I'll run for president of my block association, but not much more than that. Bloomberg remains incredibly influential and was received as a world leader when he traveled abroad for meetings on climate change. He is still trying to make a difference and using his incredible wealth to do it. Almost all of his fortune will end up with his charitable foundation. He's already given away more than $5 billion to causes that often dovetail with his political interests. There is now a fairly crowded field out there of people who are incredibly wealthy

that are giving money to advance their own political agendas. Well, if the projects they fund... The Koch brothers, for one, or George Soros. I know George Soros and I know the Koch brothers. And while I don't agree with any of those three on a lot of things, I think it's fair to say, because I know them reasonably well, they really believe and they really are trying to do something. They really want to change the world. You, for example, in the Northeast, couldn't get treated for cancer at any major university or hospital without being in a Koch cancer building. They've given an enormous amount of money. And if you get

cancer, you should start saying thank you to the Kochs. To some, it's just another example of the super wealthy having a disproportionate influence on political debate and public opinion. Bloomberg has spent a billion dollars trying to get people to quit smoking, $135 million to battle the NRA on gun control, and $100 million to assist the Sierra Club and its lawyers in shutting down more than 250 coal-fired plants. I mean, you're not out of the political arena altogether. You're very active in a number of issues, coal and the environment being one of them right now. Yeah, but I don't know that coal is a very dirty fuel.

It's been killing people around the world. People are saying no more coal. In a new book with Karl Pope, Bloomberg writes, I don't have much sympathy for industries whose products leave behind a trail of diseased and dead bodies. He's more sympathetic to the miners. Coal miners have lost their jobs. It's very tragic and we have to do something about it. Technology has come in. Technology has replaced most of these coal miners. They didn't lose their jobs for any reason other than it was automated. And now we have a bunch of people who are no fault of their own.

They've lost their job. Those jobs don't exist anymore. Somebody said to promise that coal jobs are coming back is like promising the workers who used to work at Eastman Kodak that film is going to come back. Not likely to happen. There are people out there who would say, look, is it Mike Bloomberg's job to give the Sierra Club $100 million to go out and try and shut down 250 coal plants? Well, keep in mind, Mike Bloomberg's kids and grandkids are breathing that air, just like the coal miners' families are breathing that air. And the coal miners are the ones that have the conflict. They want their jobs.

I understand that. They need to be able to feed their families. They also have to worry about their health and the health of their families. Are you giving money to try and find these coal, to try and reeducate and give them new skills? We're certainly working on trying to find ways to create jobs, not just for them, but technology, which is what costs the coal miners their jobs, not just for them, but technology, which is what cost the coal miners their jobs, not the Sierra Club, incidentally. Long before the Sierra Club started this, coal mining jobs went from 250,000 in the country to 70,000 in the country.

Bloomberg sees personal philanthropy in the tradition of Carnegie, the Rockefellers, and the Mellons, not as a threat to democracy, but as a way to do important things that are not politically feasible. And as always, Mike Bloomberg trusts his judgment. Is there anything you want that you don't have? I like what I see when I look in the mirror. If I get sentimental, I look and say, oh, it's a bad day. They beat up on me, this, that, and the other thing. But you know, we've spent a billion dollars trying to convince people to not smoke. It's been phenomenally successful. We've probably saved millions of lives.

There aren't many people that have done that. So, you know, when I get to heaven, I'm not sure I'm going to stand for an interview. I'm going right in. welcome to play it a new podcast network featuring radio and tv personalities talking business sports tech entertainment and more play it at play.it chicago with the largest number of murders last year of any major city in the country has one of the largest jails in the country. An average of 70,000 men and women pass through Cook County Jail each year, many more than once. And as with other big city jails,

most of the inmates who cycle through are either poor, mentally ill, or members of a gang. One of the few things Republicans and Democrats agree on is the need for corrections reform. And Cook County is leading the way, almost by necessity, with a new approach to help break the cycle. As we first told you earlier this year, the county sheriff, Tom Dart, is getting a lot of the credit.

A former prosecutor who's been elected and re-elected sheriff since 2006, Dart, as you'll see, is unconventional. It was a cold day at Cook County Jail when we met Tom Dart. He has redefined the role of sheriff. He sees the job as not just keeping people in jail, but helping some of them get out. He says many behind bars shouldn't be there. How are you guys doing? Good. Several times a month, Dart mingles with the men in the jail's minimum security division,

all of whom have been charged with low-level, nonviolent crimes. What's your charge? I had a violation of probation. I was on probation for driving while licensed revoked. Dart says the jail, with a population today of about 7,500, has become a dumping ground for the poor and mentally ill. What percent do you think here really shouldn't be here? I would suggest conservatively that half of the people here in the jail shouldn't be here. Half?

They don't pose a danger to anybody. The people in most jails, and 95% of the people in this jail, are waiting on a trial. So everybody here are people who haven't been convicted yet. So you say to yourself, all right, they're presumed innocent. Who is so dangerous that we need to hold them here while we're waiting on trial? You had some violence a long time ago? Nothing a long time ago? So you, nothing.

As he makes the rounds, he sounds less like an incarcerator than a defense attorney. I'm not promising you guys anything, because I never know what the hell they're going to do. But I promise you we will push you. The biggest problem for most of the inmates, he says, is they simply don't have enough money to make bail. I'm trying to find out why my bond's so high. How many percentage-wise people are really poor and can't afford bail? On any given day, we have probably 200 to 300 people that if they came up with five hundred dollars they would leave here but we find that if you have access to money wherever it may come from and frequently it's

coming from your gang and if you happen to be the guy in your gang who is the guy who does most of the shootings you're a very very valuable person they want you back out on the street but you have some individual who's in here who's never been a danger to anybody, he can't come up with $100. He's sitting. The guy with the gun, he's out the door. Next guy is possession of cannabis. He usually turns his notes over to his top advisor, Cara Smith, who runs what you might call a you-shouldn't-be-here squad. And what do you charge for?

Retail debt. And what they say you're trying to steal? Some Red Bulls. Some Red Bull drinks? Smith and her staff hold office hours looking for inmates they can help. What we need to work on is trying to get your bond reduced so that you can bond out, so that you can get out of here. Okay.

Okay? Yes. Okay, good luck. All right, you too. We'll be in touch. Combing through cases, Kara Smith discovered something disturbing. They call them dead days. We made up the term, but we call them dead days because people spend so much time pre-trial here at the Cook County Jail

that once they're sentenced to prison, they've already served their term. They probably spent more time here than the sentence in some cases. So last year alone, we had 1,024 people who spent their entire prison term here in the Cook County Jail. But the more incredible statistic is that same group of people spent an extra 222 years of custody here in the Cook County Jail. Lengths of stay run from a week or less to eight or nine years. Some of the people who spend years here are the mentally ill, who make up about a third of the population and are the jail's biggest cost.

And do you know what your charge is today? Retail theft. Retail theft. $70 worth of ground beef. $70 worth of ground beef. Every inmate is screened for mental illness when they first arrive. I would diagnose as schizophrenic when I was in group home. In group home?

Yes. Okay. We're going to make sure that you get help today. If I don't get the medication that I need, I know it's going to go wrong. This man, who also has a history of mental illness, has been in and out of the jail 37 times. I understand. How does that happen? How does someone come back to a jail 37 times? What in God's name do you expect to happen with that person? Okay, so this person's got a serious mental illness. He's not being treated. His family and him have been disconnected for

years. He obviously doesn't have a job. He has nowhere to live. What do you think is going to happen? I'll tell you what's going to happen. He will come in contact with law enforcement either because he's trying to find a place to sleep or he's trying to find something to eat, and he'll be back in here. It's not because he walked out of here saying, listen, I want to go and commit horrific crimes. It's like he's trying to survive. In many ways, society has turned jails and prisons into mental health clinics, and you're actually running one here.

Yeah. I said, okay, if they're going to make it so that I am going to be the largest mental health provider, we're going to be the best ones. We're going to treat them as a patient while they're here. It's like we are going to think differently. Cook County Jail was already one of the largest mental health facilities in the country in 2012 when Chicago closed down half its mental health clinics. These men, the high-functioning mentally ill,

are bused five days a week to a program that is now a model for other jails across the country. They get medication, visits with psychiatrists, and group therapy. So today I want us to continue to move forward, and you're going to have to have some things that's going to take you to another level. About 60% of all the jail's corrections officers have advanced mental health training, and DART has moved new people over to the medical facilities. What I did is redefine job positions, and where it would have been a law enforcement position, I changed it into a doctor position or a mental health position.

And so we've been bringing on a lot of doctors, counselors, therapists. Is he running a jail? Sometimes I wonder. Nothing exemplifies his new direction more than who he chose to run the jail. Not someone with a law enforcement background. He named a psychologist to be the warden, 39-year-old Dr. Nika Jones Tapia. I'm going to go cell to cell. Who should I talk to? She started as an intern at Cook County Jail almost 10 years ago and worked her way up. As warden, she tries to infuse more humanity into a pretty heartless place, the maximum security wing,

where she offers some tough love therapy. You wouldn't let the officers handcuff me. Why is that? They had to take him to the ground and cuff him. Are you going to keep getting into it with Saad? If they keep denying my rights. OK, so you have the wrong attitude. had to take them to the ground and cuff them. Are you going to keep getting into it with staff? Okay, so you have the wrong attitude. Because I'm trying to help you, but you're still telling me that you're going to have issues with the staff, and I can't have that. So what's up to you? We filmed you doing rounds like a doctor in a hospital, but you talk to every single inmate that you passed.

Yes. It's because we understand the person is a person. They're not what they're, they're not, they're charged. They're not their crime. And so we want to give that individual attention to as many people as we can. Sorry, gentlemen. On a walk through a medium security cell block, she works on attitude adjustment, trying to change their way of thinking so they don't come back here. All of you guys with tattoos, you might want to think about having those removed.

You need to, because how are you going to get a job when you get out? I mean, the first impression is everything. You can't do that. How many of you guys have kids? Oh, my. So it's not just you that's impacted by you being here. It's your families, your children. To reach out to their families, she's listed her phone number on the jail's website. Dart and his methods have come under intense criticism.

He's too soft on the inmates, say some of the corrections officers. Their antagonism grew into outright hostility last year when Dart, intending to be transparent about life behind the walls, released videos to the public showing guards brutally beating up inmates. Dennis Andrews, the business agent at Teamsters Local 700 that represents the corrections officers, says his members were furious. The anger was he didn't release the videos

of the detainees attacking the officers. You can't release a small segment of something happening without releasing the tape of how you got from point A to point B. Does the public have a right to see those men beating the prisoners? If we aren't releasing that information, then it furthers the public's feeling that law enforcement is covering things up and that we are hiding things. And we don't have anything to hide. We have good people here is the majority, but we have some people that don't. And we can't shy from that because it's what poisons the well with the public. After the criticism, Sheriff Dart did

release videos of inmates attacking staff. But Dennis Andrews says that didn't improve morale. He doesn't address the situations of his own staff at the jail who are being attacked daily by detainees. He presumes them innocent, but he doesn't presume his staff innocent. He presumes his staff guilty? Yes. It can't be good if they think that you're not on their side. You know, I become puzzled when they think I'm not on their side. It is the most difficult job. And you start with that, and then you're dealing with mentally ill folks. So they've been asked to do all sorts of things that they didn't sign up for, and I am outrageously sympathetic to that. What Sheriff Dart can't tell us yet is whether recidivism rates are coming down. On any given day, he says he releases roughly 200 people to the streets,

but he accepts another 200, some still the old familiar faces. To improve the chances they won't return again, he's introduced activities like chess lessons. People said, you know, your chess program, you know, how does that work? I said, you know what, one of the major issues we have with the people here is they don't think about consequences. They just think the very first move. They're playing checkers. Chess makes you think four, five, six moves out. I can't tell you how many guys in the chess program have told me

they never thought like that in their life, that their way of thinking has changed. There's more than chess. DART has enlisted volunteers to offer all kinds of classes you rarely see in a jail. And you can always move in closer if you want. A photographer teaches inmates how to find new ways to look at the world and themselves. Musicians provide therapy through rhythm and sound. Ah, voila. Are we going to put a little rosemary. Italian chef Bruno Abate gives cooking lessons.

I'm not here just to make food. I'm here to change the way you think it. So don't come back in this place anymore. We say, you know, we touch the bottom now. We can only go up, right? What about your corrections officers? Do they look at you and say, wait a minute, this is all upside down here? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely employees here that are puzzled by me.

You know, Sheriff Goofy is out giving pizza to all the inmates now because he loves it. Sheriff Goofy. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I wear it proudly. People are going to say, you're on the wrong side of the street. That's been suggested. Yeah. But you'll never find anybody that is more strident in going after the bad, the evil, the ones that hurt people. I used to prosecute them. I arrest them now in my sheriff's

office as well. But when it comes to just blindly and truly out of indifference, just saying there's segments of our society that we will treat this horrifically callous way. I'm not going to be party for that. And if that upsets people, that's fine. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities talking business, sports, tech, entertainment, and more. Play it at play.it. There are more gyms in America than ever before, but we're more overweight than we've ever been. Lots of people have theories as to why, but we're about to introduce you to a man who says he's figured it out. Greg Glassman is the unlikely creator of the biggest fitness phenomenon in the world right now called CrossFit. It's a workout program that's unpredictable, uncompromising, and raw, a lot like the man who created it.

Glassman likes to say he runs CrossFit more like a biker gang than a business, but business is booming. As we first told you in 2015, the king of CrossFit has created the largest gym chain in history and turned fitness into a spectator sport. In 2014, the finals of the CrossFit Games were broadcast on ESPN. 45,000 people showed up to watch contestants, who looked like superheroes, heave, jump, and lift until a champion was crowned. Rich Froding is the fittest man in history.

If this is the body that defines a new kind of fitness... I think we'll be all right. The brain that dreamt it all up belongs to Greg Glassman. Well before CrossFit was a competition, he designed it as a new way to work out. He says it can transform anyone, and he's not just talking about bulging biceps and six-pack abs. I'll deliver you to your genetic potential. Your genetic potential? Yeah. It sounds like you're creating a robot or something. Look at her. She was meant to look like that. That's what nature would have carved from her a million years ago, or she'd have been eaten.

Greg Glassman hardly looks like an exercise guru. There's no hint of ripped muscle underneath his untouched shirt, but he is widely considered the most powerful man in fitness today. Glassman is the architect of CrossFit, a workout program that mixes elements of weightlifting, calisthenics, and gymnastics. The classes take place in what CrossFitters call a box, a stripped down, willfully ugly space. Elbows, elbows, elbows. Up, up, up. There we go. The exercises range from simple to sadistic. It made Greg Glassman, a college dropout, a multimillionaire.

You know, you didn't invent weightlifting. You didn't invent calisthenics. Nope. You didn't invent gymnastics. So what'd you do? I invented that doing lateral raises and curls while eating pretzels is dumb. That's what I invented. He says for decades, gym owners have ignored the importance of diet and been all too happy to watch their members fall into a trance on the treadmill. Do you think people think they're getting a workout and aren't getting a workout?

Well, I mean, look, you get sweaty and you come home tired. I can appreciate that. But many people are much closer to doing nothing than they perhaps realize. Is everything up till now been wrong in the fitness industry? Yes. Yeah. As far as I can see. CrossFit classes usually don't take more than an hour. Athletes compete against each other and the clock. To keep their energy up, they're encouraged to follow something called a paleo diet, heavy on meat and vegetables, food fit for a caveman. I have heard you say that CrossFit prepares athletes for, quote, the unknown and the unforeseen. It sounds like you're getting ready to go to war. Yeah, why not? Yeah, for getting

ready for war, getting ready for earthquake, getting ready for mugging, getting ready for the horrible news that you have leukemia. What awaits us all is challenge, that's for sure. CrossFit, he says, is creating a new super breed. And although some of their athletes appear to be carved out of marble, he says the focus isn't big muscles. It's simple, functional movements like squatting and lifting, whether you're 25 or 75. Would I use deadlifts in both cases? Absolutely. Squatting in both cases? Absolutely. You'd have a 75-year-old doing deadlifts? Uh-huh. Yeah. To say no is to say that if you drop your pen on the ground, you're not going to pick it up. It's a deadlift. It's picking something off the ground. It does not require a physician's okay.

If your physician doesn't think you should deadlift, you need to get a new doctor is what you need. Glassman started to teach people to lift, jump, and sprint long before CrossFit became a household name. He had polio as a child and used gymnastics to regain his strength. In high school, a bad dismount left him with a permanent limp. He became a personal trainer and started experimenting with some of the exercises that would become the backbone of his creation. His workouts were loud, disruptive, and gym owners were not impressed. How many gyms did you get tossed out of?

About five or six. Five or six. Seven. You don't like being told what to do? Oh, I don't mind being told what to do. I just won't do it. Just say anything you want. He opened his own gym in Santa Cruz in 2001. Today, there are 14,000 CrossFit boxes around the world, each one defiantly barren. The company is private, but estimated to be worth hundreds of

millions of dollars. And Greg Glassman owns 100% of it. He has no board of directors and says he never had a business plan. This is awesome. Can I have a picture with you? I would love that. But recently found himself at Harvard Business School. If you like metrics, you like money, we're the fastest growing large chain on earth. We have broken all records. Where he was invited to share the secrets behind

CrossFit's meteoric growth. I'm not trying to grow a business. I'm doing the right things for the right people for the right reasons. One reason CrossFit's grown so fast is because just about anyone who wants to open a box can't after paying a $3,000 yearly fee and passing a two-day seminar. It's how the company makes most of its money. Two days to take a course, then I can open a gym? Amazing, huh? I mean, to me, is that enough? Well, here was the alternative. Here's what it used to be. All you had to have was the money. And you don't even have to take a test. That's where every other chain came from. Someone just launched them. And unlike most gym chains, Glassman, a diehard libertarian, relinquishes nearly all control over his affiliates. They can open a box next door to another box if they want.

It's probably not surprising Glassman believes the strongest one will survive. You don't have an iron fist on them on how they do this. Nope, it's not a franchise. They can do it any way on how they do this. This isn't Kentucky fried chicken or yeah, it's, uh, it's CrossFit. You let them do what they want to do. I do. Although he occasionally fires up the company plane, grabs the family dog and drops in on an affiliate unannounced. So you're not going in there looking for trouble? Not at all. But if I saw

someone pulling with their arms or a rounded back, I think it's inevitable that I would say something. At the company's media office in the Silicon Valley, they publish a different workout of the day every day and more information about CrossFit than you could read in a lifetime. And what is the cost for people to access the stuff that you're putting on? There is no cost. How does that make sense? Yeah, it didn't until we did it, you know. And the more video we give away, the more money we make.

Wow. CrossFitters created a huge virtual community, posting videos of workouts and wipeouts and spreading Glassman's gospel around the world in Africa, Siberia, and on the front lines of Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether soldiers or soccer moms, the evangelical enthusiasm of Glassman's disciples has led to criticism. When you hear people describe CrossFit as a cult, what do you say? Oh, I don't mind that. What if someone led a cult and they didn't know they were? I mean, that would be messed up, right? So I started trying to try to think what makes us

a cult or what would define a cult. One is recruiting, and I ain't recruiting anybody. I don't, you know, you got, people call me up. Hey, I was thinking about joining CrossFit. Well, then call back when you've decided to, you know. So the doors are open. You're not recruiting. We're not recruiting. We're not barring the doors. I mean, it really is an open house.

Glassman says he spends most of his time defending the CrossFit brand with an iron fist. If you don't defend it, you won't have a brand for long. We are in shark infested waters and I've got the shark repellent attorneys. How many attorneys do you have working, you won't have a brand for long. We are in shark-infested waters, and I've got shark-repellent attorneys. How many attorneys do you have working for you now? Dozens. They're everywhere. They're everywhere, like freaking leprechauns. CrossFit is not afraid to flex their legal muscles. They have a small in-house team of lawyers on the payroll, but also currently have retained another 60, six zero,

outside law firms to defend their reputation and trademark. They've gone after a company selling bogus CrossFit branded jump ropes, taken on gyms in Puerto Rico and Germany who used their name without permission, and successfully sued the publishers of a study that contained made-up information about CrossFit's safety record. I love my lawyers. I love my lawyers. Very few people say that. I know, it's weird. So how many lawsuits have you been involved in? 30 or 40? More? 50? Yeah. You like the fight? I do. Yeah. His most tenacious fight revolves around headlines that CrossFit could be dangerous, or worse, deadly. Some journalists have questioned how the regimen might be bad for one's back, shoulders, or even kidneys. Because it's such a new phenomenon, there aren't many studies about

the overall safety of CrossFit. The few that exist found it to be about as safe as gymnastics or weightlifting and less likely to cause an injury than running. Greg Glassman is so sure it's safe, the father of six allowed his future seventh child to be part of this class. So that person is sitting in their living room saying this all sounds interesting, but I've heard things and I don't want to get hurt. Yeah, and stay in your chair where you're sure to get hurt and you'll become one of the 300,000 people that will die next year from sitting in their chair doing nothing.

Another reason Glassman's been so good at getting people out of their chairs is the success of the CrossFit Games. This year, 380,000 people around the world competed for a chance to be featured in the finals. It is a spectacle. Part Olympic Games, part Hunger Games. The winner is crowned the fittest man or woman on earth. A title you'll be shocked to learn. Greg Glassman had his lawyer's trademark. He told us no one in the world is in better shape than the game's top athletes. You bent the mortgage, not the rent. I bet everything on it. You're going to come and best the game's athletes out of nowhere the same way you're going to walk out here on the street

and put together a Stanley Cup challenge out of morons walking by. It ain't going to happen. CrossFit Games title within reach. The games are sponsored by Reebok. CrossFit is credited with re-energizing the Reebok brand and boosting sales. Fitness apparel should be technical apparel. But five years into a 10-year deal that may be CrossFit's most important commercial partnership,

Glassman has developed some strong opinions about Reebok's owners, the German company Adidas. And he wasn't shy about sharing them on 60 Minutes. I'd like to see Reebok sold. To who? Someone young, fresh, excited, and willing to enter into the modern era of things. That's a pretty bold thing. Isn't it?

For you to say. Yeah. Does everyone ever say to you, Greg, like you shouldn't say that? Yeah. I've had people tell me, boy, he's stark raving mad, but he sure is sincere. You know, OK, good. You know, I believe it. You know, I believe it. I'm Steve Croft. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.