#69: Inside the Mind of Glenn Beck Is...Walt Disney and Orson Welles?

At this altitude I can run flat.

Out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

Can I ask you a personal question now? It is the perfect time.

What if I did the opposite?

I'm a cybernetic organism.

Living tissue over metal endoscope meet him Ferris show this episode is brought to you buy athletic greens I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably athletic greens. I view it as all in one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in the four hour body. This is more than ten years ago and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard pressed to find a more nutrientdense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral greens, complex probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases. If I miss anything I'm not aware of. Of course, I focus on nutrient dense meals to begin with. That's the basis. But athletic greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available from travel packets. I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around. Right now, athletic greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all in one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure, so adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com slash TFS, you'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com tfs. As in Tim Ferriss show athleticgreens.com tfs this episode is brought to you by five bullet Friday my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world, with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday I send out five bullet points super short of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers have asked me for something short and action packed for a very long time. Because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created five bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free. It's always going to be free. And you can learn more at Tim blog Friday. That's Tim Blog Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to five bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited. I share it first with fibal at Friday subscribers, so check it forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot. And you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So easy peasy. Again, that's slash Friday, and thanks for checking it out.

If the spirit moves you hello boys.

And girls, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where I deconstruct and analyze world class performers to find the things they have in common. Most important, the tools, the tricks, the favorite books, the routines that you can use that they use. And the figures that we look at range from billionaire investors like Peter Thiel to actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, to musicians like Bareta of glitch Mob or Mike Shinoder, Amanda Palmer to chess prodigies like Josh Waitskin. And the point of this podcast is to help you to question assumptions, to find a better way of doing things, whether that is agreeing or disagreeing with these guests. And it's really an exercise in pushing your comfort level and pushing you outside of your comfort zone. And the guest for today is no exception. He's definitely going to help you get excited one way or the other. And his name is Glenn Beck. And there is no secret agenda, no secret political agenda to this show. That's not what this is about. And it is both not a gotcha interview conversation with Glenn, but it is also not a softball interview with Glenn. So we dig into a lot of his personal habits and role models like Walt Disney and Orson Welles, for instance. But I also ask him questions such as how he feels interacting with Peter Thiel, who's openly gay, or how he feels interacting as he has with pen Gillette, who is a very open atheist. And I ask him a lot of questions that many of you submitted via Facebook, and some of them are pretty hardcore. And I think he does a very fascinating job of answering them. So that is that now there's a bit of background because I think Glenn is a world class storyteller. He's also a world class performer, radio personality and entrepreneur. Some of you may not realize. In 2014, for instance, Forbes named him to their annual celebrity 100 Power list, which pegged his earnings at $90 million for that year and placed him ahead of people like Mark Burnett, Jimmy Fallon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith. He is founder and owner of theBlaze.com, which gets somewhere between 30 and 50 million unique visitors per month, which, needless to say, is massive. And there's no end to the growth in sites. So it's a fascinating story. It's a controversial story. But there's something to be learned here, and I think you will enjoy the conversation. So withhold judgment, reserve your judgment and try to listen with an open mind. Again, this is not a political show. I'm not trying to convert you to anything. But it is a learning show. And there are some gems in here. So without further ado, please meet Glenn Beck. And for the resources, links, show notes and so on. For this episode, you can just go to Forward slash podcast. That's fourhourworkweek.com podcast, where you can also find all the other episodes. Thank you for listening, Glenn, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

I am thrilled to have you here. We were sitting outside at Aquatic park in San Francisco. It is a gorgeous day.

Perfect.

And I was going to say, has anyone ever told you have the perfect voice for radio?

But not today. Not today.

I know we have a block of time. I want to get into a lot of different subjects. The first question I really want to ask is what your close friends or colleagues believe you're a world class at.

I know you always ask that question and the punch in the face question, and I'm stumped by that because I don't consider myself world class at anything. I think that. I think that I'm a guy who just kind of slips in under the radar a bit and does things just differently enough to where it kind of short circuits the system. So maybe short circuiting the system, maybe.

Okay, this is an interesting place to start. So what are the elements of short circuiting the system that you are gifted.

At.

Or have developed a gift for?

Yeah, I think it's just quite honestly, let me start here. I have a friend who is an economic professor at Columbia, and he came up to me, first time we met, he came up to me and it was a cocktail party. And he said, so tell me, Mr. Beck, where'd you get your education? Nikonics? And I said, I don't have formal education. I'm a self educated man. He said, I knew it. Now. I thought to myself, UsOb.

Yeah, here we go.

Yeah, here we go. And I said, did you? And he said, yes, because I can't get my students to think like you. He said, they're all trained to think a certain way. So I think short circuiting the system is a lot easier when you're somebody. Steve Jobs is a great example that just has not been trained to think like everyone else because everyone else expects the system to work this certain way. And then when you walk in and you don't have that formal education, you walk in and you look at it and you're like, this doesn't make any sense. There's an easier way to do this or a better way to do this. And you kind of chart your own path and everybody stands around telling you, don't do it that way. And you do, and it usually works.

Jobs is a really interesting example because he was able to take disparate areas such as calligraphy, where he, in that case, took a number of classes that he then brought over to the development of apple