Ben's Best Friend Caleb On Using Your Hair To Test Your Health?! The Era of AI Clone Coaches, MAGICAL(?) Honey, Weighted Vests & More!

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, the AI piece is super interesting. This one kind of took me by surprise because I knew that you and all the nerds were working on some kind of like a clone of me that people could interact with in the network, but it's almost like a call-me-on-the-phone type of thing.

It's pretty remarkable. So, you and I, We talk all the time. I can literally go to the Life Network App, go to the Ask Ben, it's the little brain icon at the bottom, tap it.

So, I click the brain icon and I can click voice. Yep. Okay, start a call. Let's turn this up. Okay, here we go.

This is so good.

Hey, it's Ben. How can I help you today?

Ask yourself a question.

I am going to go out to dinner tonight to A Mediterranean restaurant, but I want to eat low carb. What would be an example of a good meal that I could order? Alright, so at a Mediterranean spot, you've got some great low carb options. I'd go for something like a grilled fish or lamb dish. Both are packed with healthy fats and protein. Pair that with a big old Greek salad, but skip the pita bread and hummus if you're really keeping it low carb, and load up on the olive oil for those polyphenols. Sound good? That sounds great. Thank you, me. Bye. Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. You know, Caleb Applegate president of the Life Network and my best friend texted me the day before Memorial Day, which was a few days ago, and invited me to come ruck into town with him and his son. And, by ruck into town, we're not talking about walking a few blocks into downtown. They're way out in the boonies at a 3-hour ruck into town. I wound up chickening out as you know, Caleb. Where were you? I was at home. I was sleeping by the time you guys went out. I did work out on Memorial Day weekend. I forget what I even did, some kind of a Murph-esque type of routine, but I just didn't feel like going for a long walk that morning. However, dude, I'm wearing a weighted vest. I see that. Yeah, just to rub it in, walking on my treadmill wearing a weighted vest. I'm wearing the Life and at Work t-shirt even though you can only see the F. And, have you seen these things, these Amorfo? No. So, Amorfo, it's kind of interesting. I've been getting into it more since I interviewed Belissa Vranich who has been on the podcast a few times to talk about foot health. And, in our last podcast, she talked about The importance of proprioception, and she brought up two things: gravity and gravity increasing body awareness. Of course, gravity via weighted vest also increases bone density, calorie burn, et cetera. But then, she also talked about textured surfaces on clothing, on mats, on flooring, on insoles of shoes, something that her and her company specialize in helping to create. And so, this was 3 weeks ago. And since then, I dug out my Amorfo vest, which is this textured weighted vest, but I'm also wearing— it might be hard for me to show you, I probably can't, but I'm wearing their shorts. Their shorts are like a compression short that's lined with little weights. So, it's weighted shorts, weighted vest, and then they have weighted compression leggings you can wear in the gym and a weighted compression top. So, the cool thing about it though is it's textured so you get this weird increase in body awareness. It's kind of hard to describe until you put one on. But yeah, there's a company called Amorpho.

Amorpho, that's cool. I thought it was a onesie.

It's not a onesie. No, it's not a pink elephant onesie.

A weighted onesie?

Yeah. Is that a thing? It could be for those of us who want jacked babies. Yeah. I'm sure like Jocko's baby has one of those.

Right.

And a little baby jiu-jitsu dummy. How'd the ruck go, by the way?

The ruck was awesome. I wish you were there, dude. So, I took my son Liam and it was just awesome father-son bonding time. We talked about school ending, business stuff, ideas, the advancements of AI, just ideating about how could we create things that could add value and plug into the Ben Greenfield Life and life ecosystem. So, it was super fun, man. I I think it was close to 10 miles, which isn't crazy but great time.

Yeah, yeah. I'm assuming somebody picked you up in town. Yeah. Or did you guys just walk back? No. I mean, I thought maybe there's ice cream, you could have an ice cream. There's ice cream. Yeah.

Yep, that's right, that's right.

Kind of funny. For those of you who heard my first podcast with Caleb, which I'll link to in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/BenGreenfieldLife Ben Caleb 2, like Ben Caleb the number 2. We got into Caleb's whole background and how we became friends and started the Life Network and his background as a seasoned executive with experience in leading companies in gaming and entertainment and digital spaces. So, go back and listen to that episode if you want the whole backstory on Caleb. But of course, as a part of that discussion, You'll learn that he lives in North Idaho. I moved down here close to North Idaho. We're kind of out in the boonies a little bit up in the— pretty much anywhere in Idaho is in the boonies. So, yeah, walking into town is quite far, but we have good ice cream. We got lucky, dude. We got one good ice cream shop downtown and now 10 minutes away from me in Potlatch, Idaho, there's gelato, like gelato that's as good as what you get in Italy. It's nuts.

Yeah, yeah, we're going there tomorrow.

Yeah, shout out to Lavish. Yeah. Text me when you head out there. I will. I'm going to Salt Lake City tomorrow, but if I haven't left yet, it's interesting. So, we didn't really talk about this a lot in our last show, but you came out of the tech world into the fitness and biohacking world and now you're running Life Network. I mean, you're going to all these health expos and biohacking conferences. Is that weird for you still?

I mean, there's definitely a sense of imposter syndrome if I'm honest. I don't come from this space and I'd never really prioritized my health. So, I think there is this sense of, "Wow, this is fascinating. I'm definitely curious and excited about the people that I'm meeting, the products that I get to check out." I think there's still this awe and fascination. I feel like a kid in a candy shop, if I'm honest. And upon reflection, one of the main things that I took away from the Health Optimization Summit that we were just at in Austin back in April was just this sense of familial ties. Like, you get to know these people, you see them over and over at different events, and they're some of the best human beings on the planet. Like, truly, they love people, they want to enhance health and wellness. They are there to optimize themselves, their family members, their communities, and they're flying in from all over the world.

Free beef jerky. There's a few—

there's that too.

Yeah, go and get free beef jerky.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Beef organ jerky. Yeah, no, it's awesome, man. I feel super blessed. It's exciting.

So are there things that have kind of like stuck with you as far as certain practices you've adopted or tech or gadgets you've picked up or things you've vetted for Life Market, which we can explain later on, that are just dailies for you that if someone would have run into you a year ago or you yourself would have imagined you never thought you'd be using something like this?

Ben Greenfield: Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, everything from— we connected with the founder of Baja Sea Salts at Health Optimizations. I mean, that's awesome and that's easy, right? Put some salt on your food. But, there's cool gadgets, everything from— in fact, you just had the folks on that created the WaveWatch. That thing actually works, by the way. I don't know if you've used it, but that thing's awesome. So yeah, we brought that into the Life Market.

How do you explain it to people, the WaveWatch?

Well, so I go over to their booth and there's this incredible lady explaining her background and why she created this. And then, her sons were there helping her. And, it was all about just frequency using sound to infiltrate your body to influence your energy and your moods and your brain. And, it was pretty cool. I used to think, "Hmm, I don't know about that." But, after researching and looking into some of the science that's backing their claims and then actually using it myself, I mean, even my wife, Shana, we can see a noticeable difference when you wear it.

Ben Greenfield: At first, I thought it was like the Apollo wristband that just kind of vibrates to produce a haptic sensation, which works and I love. But, if you put your ear down next to the watch or if you have this turned up all the way, you can even hear it if it was down by your side, it's producing an audio frequency almost like imagine the high-pitch audio frequency that some kind of mosquito repellent generator would use or some high-pitch sound a dog can hear that a human can't. And then, it's got this interface. I mean, I know you've played with it, but just for people who are listening, you can scroll through, I think there's over 100 different recipes on there for allergies, sinus issues, insect bites, every single hour of sleep to match your circadian rhythm and change the audio frequency at 11:00 p.m. and midnight and 1:00 a.m. I've been messing around with it too. My only complaint is that I wish it had— because this is probably the thing I use on my watch the most besides telling time is a stopwatch. And, I use my stopwatch a lot when I'm working out or doing cardio or whatever. If it had a stopwatch function, I could almost just use it instead of a regular watch.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. No, that's a great note. But, it's products like that that I would have never been introduced to or even sought to find But you do at events like that. And so not only is it fun being there for 2 days, it's just go, go, go. But you're meeting these incredible founders with these life-altering stories, you know, how they got here, what prompted them, you know, as an inciting incident, if you will, to create what they've created. So it's kind of like this group of, of mad scientists and people who just like put it all on the line to develop this thing that changed their life after this crazy sickness, or they were on death's door, they had a family member who died. Another product, by the way, that we were introduced to is Wise Earth Honey. My team laughs because I've been obsessed with this honey. Wise, W-Y-S-E. We just started carrying it in the Life Market. This is a— they used honey because it's highly bioavailable, but they've taken adaptogenic extracts and infused it in the honey. This stuff is insanely good.

I have a jar of this stuff. Is it kind of like Manuka honey? It's super creamy and thick.

Yes, yes. It's unbelievably good. Yeah.

Because I don't know where it came from and I didn't even pay that much attention to the lab. Maybe it did come from there or maybe they just sent it to me. But, just real quick, just a quick hack for people, quick tip. And, this is a guilty pleasure of mine. Maybe it's related to the fact that my two favorite times of the year mostly are my birthday and Father's Day because on both those days I get carrot cake. And, I almost every day with lunch have a carrot that's smeared with peanut butter and honey. And, I've been using that honey and it's awesome. It's like when your parents used to make little ants on a stick with the celery and the peanut butter and the raisins. So, health hack for people. There you go.

Ben Greenfield: That's a killer health hack. The thing with their honey is that it massively reduces chronic inflammation through the whole body, not just a focused area. So, I love it. Our entire family is taking it and we've noticed significant differences in energy levels, clarity of mind. There's help with women's hormones. My wife has said she's noticed a difference. My daughters are taking it. So, we're excited. And again, I wouldn't have even known that that existed.

Yeah, probably better than the plastic teddy bear-shaped honey. I'm just guessing, just guessing, hypothesizing. What about in the whole fitness department? Because I know you do sometimes those CrossFit WOD-esque workouts down at— what's the place in Moscow?

Mission Strength. Shout-out to Pat Dara. So, good friend of ours, yeah, started this. It's just an old empty warehouse and he's got Rogue equipment in there and he programs these incredible workouts. He actually does training for the Navy, I think specifically during the summer, but he's the guy that trains a lot of the, I think the SEALs. He's an incredible guy, super humble, really gifted, but his programming is fantastic. And, what I love about it is just the community that's forming there.

So, there's the weird mashup between fitness and biohacking. Weighted vests aren't really biohacks, right? Those have been around for a while in the whole rucking world. But, have you picked up at these conferences or in your talks with people for Life Market, vetting products for them, et cetera, anything that you've woven into the workouts there or in your fitness or recovery routine specifically?

So, I was connected with Peluva Shoes, right? You told me about these shoes. They were at the Health Optimization Summit and they actually sent me a pair of shoes, very, very kind of them to do that. And I thought, "Man, I'm not ever going to wear monkey shoes." That's what I call these things because you put your individual toes in them. So, I started wearing them to Mission Strength. And I have to say, dude, they are my go-to now. I was using Vivos before, which are fantastic, Vivo Barefoot. Barefoot, again, amazing barefoot shoe company. But, Peluva, totally different experience, super comfortable. It takes me a minute to get them on because you really do notice when you wear— So, I'm a big— This is something that Sean Wells and I joke about. He and I both are really into retro Air Jordan shoes. In fact, I'm wearing some now. And, Sean, Shawn, if you're listening to this, you are the first person that I've met that has a bigger and better collection than I do, but not for long.

Shawn Wells, by the way, also a former podcast guest, the world's greatest supplement formulator. Is he going to be an expert in the Life Network?

Totally connected with him. For those of you who don't know of Shawn Wells, he is one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met. I feel like I've known this guy for years. We just really hit it off. Unbelievably smart, brilliant guy, and has graced us with his presence as an expert in the Life Network. So, yeah, you can connect with him there, but just an extraordinary mind.

Ben Greenfield: Back to the Air Jordan piece versus Peluvas. I agree. Peluvas, if you guys haven't tried them, if you tried Vibram FiveFingers, these things are fashion, kind of sort of even though you're still going to be in the doghouse with any dyed-in-the-wool fashion enthusiasts if you're caught wearing these around them. And, I can't say they're my wife's favorite look yet, but from a functional standpoint, nothing beats a toe shoe with a wide toe box. So, yeah, chalk that away, folks. It's something to look into. But, the experts piece, for people who don't know, how does that even work? What does it mean for somebody to be an expert in Life Network?

That's a great question. So, Life Network is the social hybrid public square app that you and I have created. For those of you who don't know, it's totally free. It's like Facebook meets Reddit.

We didn't go to AI. What's it called now? Vodacoding?

Yeah, no, there wasn't that.

Vibe coding where you just like give AI a vibe and it kind of gives you an app. Like, yeah, it was a little more complex than that.

This— we have a whole like software engineering team and an entire team team that's facilitating all the behind the scenes.

So yes, a year and a half to build this.

Yeah, exactly. And we're still building and it's getting better and better and better every day. But within the Life Network app, which is totally free to download, we wanted to give you information and access in your pocket. That was the whole, you know, our, our vision. Ben, you and I, we want to reach 10 million people in 10 years. Like, that's what we're doing. So part of that is who are the trusted experts that you can rely on? Experts like yourself, experts like Sean Wells that we just talked about. We've got some of the most extraordinary minds that have come together inside the Life Network app. Offering latest articles, videos, podcasts even. So we've curated all in this beautiful Discover section. And again, it's all free. Like, you don't have to go search for— you don't have to go to this website over here or this TED Talk over here or watch this masterclass behind this gated paywall over here. We've curated beautifully, easily, and it's fully accessible to you in an app.

It's pretty slick. And what, it's like 35 experts right now, I think?

Yeah, around 35, we're pushing to 40.

Yep. And, you get to interact with these folks in the forums. We can talk about what the coaching program is going to look like later on, but the AI piece is super interesting. This one kind of took me by surprise because I knew that you and all the nerds were working on some kind of a clone of me that people could interact with in the network, But, it's almost like a call-me-on-the-phone type of thing.

It's pretty remarkable. So, you and I, we talk all the time. I can literally go to the Life Network app, go to the Ask Ben, it's the little brain icon at the bottom, tap it.

For those of you watching the video, open up the Life Network app. By the way, there's a cable coming out of my phone. Quick tip for people is I don't use a cell phone in my office. I have an ethernet. Lightning adapter. So, I'm hardwired in my office all day with no actual EMF. So, I click the brain icon. And then, okay, it's got me on there and I can click voice. Okay, start a call. Let's turn this up. Okay, here we go.

This is so good.

Hey, it's Ben. How can I help you today? Did you hear that?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Ask yourself a question.

Okay. Alright. Hey, Ben, what's up? I am going to go out to dinner tonight with Caleb and his wife and my wife to a Mediterranean restaurant, but I want to eat low carb. What would be an example of a good meal that I could order? Alright. So, at a Mediterranean spot, you've got some great low-carb options. I'd go for something like a grilled fish or lamb dish. Both are packed with healthy fats and protein. Pair that with a big old Greek salad but skip the pita bread and hummus if you're really keeping it low carb and load up on the olive oil for those polyphenols. Sound good? That sounds great. Thank you, me.

Bye.

Dude, it's so cool. But, that was a short conversation. I actually vetted this this thing behind the scenes because you could chat with it via text or you can give it a call. And, a lot of people might be wondering, "Well, why wouldn't I just use Grok AI and say act as a personal trainer, act as a nutritionist?" The difference is this is drawing from all of my books, my podcasts, and my vetted content. So, not that I want to sound hubristic, but if you look at me as an expert and you want my advice, not necessarily whatever Grok or GPT or Claude or whatever has aggregated. This allows you, as long as you got the app in your back pocket, to be able to not flip through 700 pages of Boundless, for example, but just literally give me a call and you can keep that conversation going while you're on a road trip. You could just have an entire conversation on a road trip about, I don't know, weighted vests and how to use them right.

It's a remarkable feature. I've had people calling me, family and friends, are you kidding me? I started using this, I'm addicted to it. This is unbelievable. In fact, my mom actually called and she said in 4 months of research around a particular subject, I think it was like DMSO or something that they've been looking into for a while and gaining kind of a little bit of just handwritten information around. She was like, literally in 2 minutes in a conversation with the Ask Ben AI, I was able to confirm and exceed all the information I had gathered in 4 months. So she's blown away and now she's like sharing it with her friends and her friends like, this is crazy. So we've, we're getting a lot of great feedback and I will say shout out to our friends over at Delphi. Dara is a legend over there. They've created an amazing AI tool.

They're like a backend AI platform.

Yep.

Yep.

So we have a partnership with them.

Like a long-term plan? I know we're literally talking business live on a podcast, but opening kimono for folks, that's how Caleb and I talk. Have this like for other experts or to build on that clone in some way?

We do. In fact, we have a pretty disruptive way to let every person create their own AI bot. So we have a new— we have our forums page right now. As, as an example. The forums page will turn into next week, so by the time this comes out, you will see it as the community page. And the community tab will have discussions, so those forums, uh, but they're also going to have events and groups. Here's the cool thing. Right now we're exploring— a person can create a group that's public and/or private, which means it's just invite only., and the owner of that group can say, I want to spin up an AI bot, and then eventually can have the participants in the group, if it's invite or whatever, subscribe to that. So it could be that an expert creates a group inside Life Network in the community tab and wants to make it subscription. This is part of our effort to create a pathway for the creator economy.

So, what you're describing right now would be how an expert could potentially monetize their involvement within Life Network while creating value for the people who might be in a group they create.

Totally. And, think of it too not just as experts, but what about personal trainers? What about gym owners?

You just called personal trainers and gym owners not experts, Caleb.

Other than leading key people of influence that are social influencers. What we're trying to do is say, look, we have a dedicated section for our quote unquote experts, and we have a vetting process for how we bring those experts in. However, comma, in the forum section in this, in this new community tab, we've got these groups and we want you to be able to monetize those groups. So like I have a buddy right now up in Liberty Lake, Washington. They've, they've got this really incredible group. I think it's 600 to 1,000 people that subscribe to this group every month. And they said, "Yeah, we use this platform. It charges us per month. The minute you do something like what you're describing, we're bringing the entire group over." Because at that point, you have a free app that has free groups, forums, social feed, information all around health and wellness, and you're telling me I can toggle a switch and monetize my group, bring my own version of AI in there that's, that's watching and learning our information so that members of that group can ask the group owner, the brand, the, the expert, the trainer, anything they want and get real-time information. Yeah, absolutely.

So the actual AI is getting trained on the activity that's occurring within that forum.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay, I get it. So, let's say I'm listening, I'm a mushroom forager and I haven't killed anybody yet because they say there's no such thing or there's old mushroom foragers and there's bold mushroom foragers, but there's no such thing as an old bold mushroom forager. But, I'm a mushroom forager and I'm like, "Dude, I want to start a mushroom foraging group." I can do that, potentially even march in there, and correct me if I'm wrong, with maybe the information I already have on mushroom foraging. Maybe I've got a PDF, some bullet points I want to copy and paste, et cetera, start a discussion. Whatever content I launch that group with would kind of seed the AI and then the discussion that forms around that would continue all the way down to where I might be able to ask the AI bot within that group, "Hey, I live in Cleveland. I want to go mushroom foraging on Saturday." "Are there any Life Network members within this group who are in this area who appear to be whatever, beginner to intermediate foragers and want to come out with me?" That's 100% spot on.

And, I would add, you can ask that AI anything pertaining to the category information about that subject matter in that group. So, the AI that lives inside that group, and it can be toggled on and off by the group creator, has a voice. And, that can be your soup-to-nuts, A to Z information about mushroom foraging to use your example or sauna usage or cold plunge. I mean, the list goes on and on.

Ben Greenfield: Pull in like AI can any information from anywhere on the internet based on the group owner's preferences.

Exactly. Yeah, it will all be trained. You could say, If we start a group, let's say Morozko, one of our partners and friends, Thomas Seager, he's a CEO over there. Shout out to Thomas Seager, incredible guy. Let's say he starts a group and it's a cold plunging group. He can train this AI if he wants to turn that on in the group and train it on all of his books, writings, the science-backed information and studies all around cold plunging. So, if I enter that group, I can interact with the Thomas Seeger AI if he decides to turn that on. And, if I'm a member, I can pay $4.99 a month. I'm in the group, I get all the latest greatest on the group, and I'm able to ask questions pertaining to that subject matter by and with him. Game changer. It's a game changer for how communities communicate.

Dude, it actually is pretty cool. Now, what you have to add eventually is the ability to merge groups so people can mushroom forage in the cold. Coming soon.

Yeah, coming soon.

You mentioned the idea, maybe it was me that mentioned it, now I'm foggy, of people getting together. I did talk about mushroom foraging, for example. As far as meetups go or ways that— because this is the issue with Facebook, right, to a certain extent even though people meet on Facebook and they get together in person, there needs to be, in my opinion, I even talked about this at the Health Optimization Summit, some link between the digital experience, digital group, and digital friends and real analog flesh and blood interactions in a physical location. How are you thinking about or solving for that?

Oh, that's such a good question. And if you haven't, for all your listeners, if you haven't checked out Ben's talk that he gave on loneliness at Health Optimization Summit, it was remarkable. So really appreciate you doing that. You know, what we're trying to do is create an atmosphere up here in the digital ether that is facilitating that initial community dialogue. You get the information. We see Life Network as an information highway and your initial connection point. But beyond that, we want to take it to what we're kind of coining as local life. We have just started work on our Places feature, which is a directory. That directory, think of it like most of the listeners here probably are familiar with Yelp, right? You go to Yelp and you type in, you know, I want a nice dinner restaurant, and it gives you rankings and reviews. It's the same kind of thing that we're putting inside the Life Network app. We see this as an anchor feature. We want to push people towards clean, healthy living, right? We want wellness as the center pillar, and that has to go into your local community with a wellness center, with, you know, a hotel stay or Airbnb stay, any kind of gym experience, a restaurant, And so we've got these cool categories forming. And inside the Life Network, if you click the Places feature, which will be coming in about 30 days from now, you will see suggested places with reviews. And so that will be the beginning of how do we touch— how do we take all this really cool information that we're learning, curated information, but now touch it down practically into your life where you live.

So how big are we thinking? Like, I think restaurants, that's kind of a no-brainer, right? What are the healthy either paleo-esque or seed oil-free or farm-to-table style restaurants in my area that have whatever the Life Network sticker on the window, they've been vetted. I even know if I go there, there's a high likelihood I'm going to see some other Life Network friends there that I've been interacting with or I can even post in the forums for people to join and meet me there. Gyms or these biohacking facilities, those also seem like low-hanging fruit. But, what about— I'm flying to Salt Lake tomorrow like I mentioned to do a filming on Saturday morning. I think my filming isn't until 11:00. And, let's say I want to be outside because I'm going to be inside under the cameras and the bright lights and I want to go to maybe a park that has a fitness circuit. Could we weave in nature experiences, bodies of water, places where people can cold plunge. I mean, how do you think the Places feature can go?

Ben Greenfield: Well, I think it starts with high-level categories, but then it can get micro like what you're talking about. So, what you're talking about is wellness experiences beyond just a brick and mortar, right? We're going to meet up at this river. This is like the spot up in Spokane where you like to do your annual New Year's Day plunge. Yeah, yeah. So, I think we absolutely want to push to micro experiences and keep it about the experiential, not just in the typical restaurants and so on and so forth. And, that will be one unique differentiator with the feature that we're building is that we can kind of look at this landscape of health and wellness and say, "Well, we actually believe in grounding. We actually believe in nature. We actually believe in getting out there and interacting with people in outside settings. So, how do we incorporate that into the feature? That's not something that you'll find with Yelp.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And, what about bringing your friends or meeting up with your friends in that place without having to maybe message them individually within the app? Let's say I am going to go to that park to work out. I'm not going to post it to X because I don't want to get ax murdered and I want to post it within the vetted and curated Life Network community to have a few people kind of speak the language, so to speak, and aren't going to look at me like I'm a freak of nature if I'm wearing BFR bands to show up there with. Is there a way or a plan to allow you to just ping your friends and say, "Hey, we're going to go to this Life Network place and meet up?" Yep, yep.

So, we already have group DMs. So, you can create— I've got several DMs with family members and, and different friend groups inside the Life Network app right now. So that's already a thing. But when we introduce groups, you could create like a private, uh, uh, Spokane River, you know, annual polar plunge, and it's invite only. I'm inviting 20 people, or inviting 10 people, right? And that can be your private group. So you'll be able to message within that group to those people as well.

Okay, got it. So, another question about the Life Network. I want to pick your brain about Life Market also.

Yeah.

But, in terms of the— beyond the Ask Ben AI, what about the whole idea of AMAs with the actual experts themselves? I'm part of this group, I've got 35 different experts. Talk to me about how the AMAs work in terms of getting a chance to interact live with actual people in real life?

Yeah, yeah. So we, we do this right now at least once a month. And a huge shout out to Carrie Johnson, who oversees the community and the conversation. She's got a really incredible podcast that's also live. So it's not just the typical podcast. She does live broadcasts like what you're talking about called the Life Lounge. So here's why we do it. There's so much information out there. So, we started with that premise, right? It's just everywhere all at once. And so, if you're just venturing into, "I want to make my life a bit healthier. I am not feeling good. I want to feel better," right? It starts there and then you're introduced to this whole array of just, here's 20 different cold plunge options and 15 different sauna lines and it's infrared and traditional and there's science about this and science. Right? It's just overwhelming. So we went from people are suffering, people have pain, people need help. They know that. Next, there's a ton of information. So how can we sift through and create one tab? Think of it like Spotify for music, right? It's your curated playlists or suggested playlists, right? You like this kind of music, so here's what we're recommending to you. So, we're treating it the same way. What are you interested in? How do you want to optimize your life? Do you— you're looking for better sleep, better activity and movement, better nutrition, things like that? So, we have an onboarding, one question we ask you to check as many boxes as possible, and then we have email personalization and content personalization that we serve up in the Life Network App experience, all tailored for you. So, you don't have to sift through it anymore. So, the AMAs, are that kind of icing on the cake that we say, hey, as a user here, we think it's really cool if these experts are able to— and AMA, by the way, stands for Ask Me Anything. Yeah. So these are, these are just questions that the audience comes with and you get to interact with these people. So we see huge value and there's been great response. So it's not just sifting through the noise, it's also connecting with the experts that are putting out the content that have written the books that are creating the supplements and so on and so forth.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, let's say I have a podcast feed reader, Overcast, Castbox, Spotify, whatever. I subscribe to maybe 15 podcasts. And, on a daily basis, maybe 40% of the actual episodes released, I'm not interested in very much or at all. Not to sound misogynistic, but Maybe I'm just not interested in pre-perimenopause and HRT for women, and I'm getting that a lot on my feed, and I'm also getting a lot on my feed like endurance running and cycling and swimming, which I'm also not interested in. In the Life Network, could I just literally say I'm interested in muscle gain, I'm a man, I like the idea of hormone optimization, strength, and maybe nutrition. And then, the actual episodes and content that are being pushed out by these 35+ and ever-growing body of experts, ad-free podcasts if I'm a premium member, and any content related to that is what I'd see instead of just the clutter I'm not that interested in.

Yes. As we continue on, and that is actually a really good question. Right now, we are kind of open beta finalizing some of our core feature set. In the fall, we're going to be moving towards a heavy initiative around what you're describing we call personalization. So that's going to be our big fall push is we want to stop creating features. We're finalizing those over the next 3 months. We want to turn all attention to personalization because we care about every user. We want to see them achieve their outcomes, get connected with the information that really matters to them, that's going to move the needle for them in their own life.

Personalization and community, because the way I think about this is, let's say I've gone to Life Market and I've bought I don't know, to come full circle, like a WaveWatch and some Wild Honey. Is it wild?

Wise Earth.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, I could actually go into the community forums and perhaps share, "Hey, I realized that this WaveWatch pairs really well with the Shiftwave chair I discovered on one of the podcasts and also, if you use this wild honey on like seatopia fish, it's amazing. What else have you guys found or what other tips do you have from these products that have already been vetted within LifeMarket? So, it's almost like you're not just getting access to stuff that's been vetted but then you have the opportunity to create discussions and get tips around it from other members.

Ben Greenfield: 100%. That's the whole purpose. Yeah, yeah. It is community. It's discovery, community, and then I would say activation.

Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about Life Market and how it works exactly because I know a lot of people are just like, "Well, dude, Amazon has great search filters. Why can't I just go do that?" Yeah, good question.

So, you and I talked about this Life Network in the beginning. What I think we envisioned was more of just an entire ecosystem, right? It's not just a social platform or just Ben Greenfield Life or just Triumph Coaching. We saw it as an entire ecosystem, and here's why. We wanted to make sure with the whole ecosystem, the whole product offering, that we had something for everyone. It's been very important to both you and I, Ben, that we, you know, we have something for someone at every budget level. It's our belief that it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, how much money you make or don't make, you deserve the right to have access to really good, trusted, safe information. So that's been our basis. So we created the network. It's free. If you want to jump into a premium offering, you get group coaching, you get the Ask Ben AI calls, you get some really cool things.

And, and coming soon, VIP meetups with me. If you're a premium member, you get notified about any VIP dinners or meetups I'm throwing.

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, which is going to be super cool. The market was our attempt to say, okay, you're in discussion, somebody brings up Wise Earth. What if Amazon doesn't have them? You know, I have to go to their website. Is there an affiliate code? Is there a deal? Is it some special weekend that's a holiday weekend that they're offering a discount? I don't really know much. So we wanted to facilitate the conversation and give them easy access. And we wanted with Life Market to curate trusted brands that we have taken the time to vet. So that's important. That's an important distinction because Amazon isn't going to do that.

It's like what Ben Greenfield recommends. What I had is the vision for that that for a while. All the stuff you hear me talk about on podcast, here's one place to get it. You don't have to go listen like 10 episodes ago to find the actual discount code for it. It's kind of like that on steroids. And, that's a big part of the reason that we want to do Life Network because I'm one little guy talking about biohacking and longevity and nutrition and fitness, but there's so many other people way smarter than me, so much of the good information out there. And so many other products and solutions I don't talk about. And then, the other issue you and I saw, we talked about this in our first podcast, was there's not a great deal of— it was like the comment section of my show, but there's not a lot of community and the ability to interact with all your friends who are, back to use this analogy, speaking the same language, your tribe.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's hard. There's friction, right? There isn't that community. You mentioned X earlier. When I go to X, it's anything and everything. Could be a post on health and wellness, could be a post on the Maha Movement. It could be a post on, you know, Elon stepping down from Doge. And Instagram's exactly the same way. Now it's serving up content from people who I follow. So it's starting to create curation. Based upon algorithm. But what if we kind of reshifted everything? What if we said, hey, we want the social experience, but we want to do it in a clean, healthy way, and we want to serve up content that actually helps you, helps your family, helps your community? So while, um, social behavior creates potential for addictive behavior, we think if you're going to do that, if you're going to be on your phone How about do it with something that's creating prompts in your life or cues in your life or information for your life that's helping you live healthier and better? So, it's kind of a shift in thinking. And then, the market is activation. Market is— and by the way, we have all these brands we've been working with, these brands that are coming to us saying, "Hey, here's the science, here's the story, here's our why." And, it's we exist because we love people and we want to help change the narrative around health and wellness. Would you take a look at this? And, we're able to control that and say, "This meets the mark and we want to show people this." Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

And, not pay-to-play. This is not a magazine advertisement. You just buy a spot and you're in. I mean, I won't name any names, but this happened yesterday. Pretty decent product. Me and one other person on the team noted that it was an MLM company. I don't want to offend anybody listening in right now who's involved in MLM, but we didn't want MLM and here's your opportunity and Tupperware parties in the Life Network. So, you're like, "No, this is not going to be a good fit for Life Market." Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

That's actually a really great relevant example. That's a way that we can use a little bit of common sense and say, look, we, we don't want gatekeeping, we don't want pay-to-play, we just want to bring the people the latest, greatest, safest, most trusted experiences, products, services, experts, all in one home. That's really the heart of what we're doing here. And, and from the beginning, we, we saw a pathway to reduce clutter, reduce information overload, curated beautifully. But as the Make America Healthy Again movement is really starting to get momentum and take shape, of which you're a part of, we see this as a contribution, a gift, right? As people are looking for other like-minded individuals to connect with, we've got this amazing community forming and it's not behind a paywall. We've made it easy for you. That's what's so beautiful about how it's unfolding.

Yeah. And then, by the way, if anybody who's involved with MEHA is listening in, we definitely want to play with that entire movement. I just got back from D.C. where I had the honor of seeing the actual Make Our Children Healthy Again report presented to the MEHA Commission with President Trump. And, it was fantastic to see people actually getting down and dirty and rolling up their sleeves to do something about ultra-processed food and pharmaceutical interests and lack of movement and excess screen time and everything else. And, that's certainly something we want to get behind at Life Network. So, if anybody's involved with MEHA, definitely keep us plugged into that and we're doing all the work we can on our end as well. You know what surprised me, Caleb, was how many people came out of the woodwork at our last event in Austin where we kind of soft launch Life Network. That's where we had our booth and our team to do the workouts and to kind of sample what type of coaching and what type of workouts we dish out in Life Network. That's not something we've talked about yet, but how is the actual I just want to work out and I want to work out kind of like I want a vetted product, I want a vetted coach and I want to do workouts and I want a community to be a part of it or even want to work out individually with a coach. How's that whole scenario work?

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Again, we've designed it where it's choose your own adventure. What do you need? And, that's going to be different for every individual. So, we started with the app. Here's the cool part. I'm going to kind of paint a pathway here. So, for your listeners, follow me here. So, path number 1 is just I maybe don't have the funds at the moment. I want to engage in community. I know something's wrong. Great. You're a user of Life Network. Get started. Get your feet touched down. Get connected with some other people. Ingest information that's helpful to you and your desired outcomes. Step 2, You know what? I think I need some accountability. I don't have a big checkbook at the moment, but I know that I would like somebody to walk with me. Great. We have Life Premium. You mentioned that earlier, Ben. Life Premium, for those of you who are listening, every person— this is a very limited time offer. I sound like an infomercial. This is not an infomercial. We believe in this so much. That Ben and I are willing to give this for a dollar for your first month. If you don't find value in $1 for your first month, you can cancel at any time. So Life Premium, you get one group coach call a month. So you're in a small curated cohort of no more than 15 people. You remove all ads from the free Life Network experience. You get the unlimited calls with the Ben AI bot. And so much more. And part of that is the workouts. We have programmed workouts and we're starting live workouts. We're going to be doing live cooking classes, like making dinner together. There's some cool stuff that it's like taking it to the next level, going deeper in community, deeper with accountability. Every person can try it for $1 for their first month, and then after that it's $34.99 a month. Again, we've tried to look at the situation and go How do we meet people where they're at, right? This isn't just about running a business. This is also about democratizing access to health and wellness and giving people tools and a toolbox that can really help them with their outcomes. So, that's kind of step 2. Step 3, I want a one-on-one coach. So, we have a whole entire coaching business and program called Triumph Coaching. This is something you've engineered behind the scenes for years, Ben. You have the most incredible and dedicated coaches that have radically helped people transform their lives. So, with Elite, you get that one-on-one coaching. We've revamped the entire program and it is just on fire right now. So, you can get one-to-one with Elites. And then, finally, If you want to work with the man of the hour, which is very limited, I think we've even reduced slots at this point because you're so in demand, Ben, we have this VIP training. So, those are kind of the 4 touchpoints. Again, we've got free, we've got Life Premium that you can try for a dollar for your first month. We've got Elite Training that starts that one-on-one with our coaches. And that, by the way, that includes nutrition plans, movement plans, It's the whole package. And then, the final is working with Ben Greenfield personally. And, I think we're sold out of that spot and there is a waiting list, but that would be kind of the final knot. So again, something for everyone.

The thing that I think differentiates training plans and meal plans now in an era of AI where you could pretty easily put what you want and what you like to eat and what your goals are and maybe some labs, which I want to ask you about in a second, by the way, and it'll spit something out for you. But, I get this feedback over and over again from my clients. What they like is to be able to just ping me anytime and ask me something whether they're going out on a date with their husband that night and want to know what to eat or whether they tweak their shoulder and all of a sudden they need a new workout for the next morning. They like those touchpoints that adapt dynamically that AI doesn't give you or even the idea that maybe you upload your genetic and your blood testing and your salivary data, et cetera, to AI and it tells you you are supposed to be a low-carb person, but you're also, whatever, hitting Mission Strength in downtown Moscow or doing CrossFit or you're signed up for an Ironman. And, all of a sudden, what AI thinks you need drastically differs from what your actual goals are and what needs to be adapted. And, I have yet to find AI to do a good job dynamically adapting and responding to a person in real time based on their daily needs and even their long-term goals. And then, you pair that with the idea of the community piece that you talked about. And again, like it's just fun, if you like to work out with people and be motivated to have that option to even do it live. But, I mentioned labs, Caleb. What's the deal with that? Because I know there's this idea that you and I talked about in the last podcast where people can do a hair tissue mineral analysis, which actually tells you a shockingly large amount about not just your minerals but adrenal system, sympathetic versus parasympathetic drive, carb oxidation, fat oxidation, et cetera. How have things evolved since our last chat as far as the whole idea of the Lifeprint and where that fits in?

Yeah, great question. Before I answer that though, I want to go back to the AI point that you are making. For all of the listeners today, AI is gaining momentum and becoming unbelievably rich in knowledge base and it's changing everything. But here's the part that I like to remind our team and especially our coaching team with is that there, in my personal opinion, there will always need to be a human verification. While AI gives you a baseline, it gives you a starting point. So you mentioned uploading your labs. It is imperative that you get that human verification, whether that's with your doctor, your personal training coach, some expert that you're working with, have that verification because to your point, the human component, the dynamic nature of what you're talking about cannot be understated and AI is never going to understand the nuances in, through, and around that. So, that's a really important distinction.

Ben Greenfield: By the way, just real quick, this came up the other day. Food allergy, it's usually kind of like a red yellow, green. And I was using AI and it was giving me some meal plan recommendations based on a food allergy result that I had uploaded. But for this particular client, I'm also looking over their questionnaire data and having discussions with them about what they like to eat. And it turns out, I'm not going to out anybody on this show, but they actually had a meal that they really enjoyed with their family at night, and some of the foods in there were like, "Proceed with caution" on the food allergy panel. And, we actually had a chat about, okay, so do you go with the 90%-10% and trade life enjoyment, being with your family, not turning up your nose at the traditional meal that your wife loves to cook with sticking 100% to what AI is telling you based on your food allergy data? So, there's that whole family life dynamic too that's important to weave in or maybe just AI is telling me I should be training for endurance, but all my friends are doing a strength training workout Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and that's my happy place. Ben Greenfield: Great point.

So, going back to your question around the HTMA. So, we like to use acronyms. What is an HTMA? It's a hair tissue mineral analysis. I learned about this originally from our good friend, Dr. Leland Stillman. Who's an incredible functional integrative medicine doctor and a core contributing expert, one of the original at Life Network when we were getting it off the ground. Huge props to Dr. Stillman, who has been just massively instrumental in a lot of the shaping around my knowledge base when it comes to health and wellness. The HTMA was introduced to me as a kind of a standalone. You You cut some hair and I thought, really, you can get a diagnostic from some hair? That's interesting. But the more that I went through it and I started doing this every quarter, I realized a couple of things. Number one, it was giving me really good data so that I could then figure out the biocustom supplementation that I needed. And I was going to be radically different than my wife, Shauna, and our children even. The other thing that it pointed out is that I had— this was a crazy circumstance, but I had scary high copper levels. We wouldn't have known this if we hadn't done the HTMA. This was very informative and revealing about something that was hidden beneath the surface that I had no idea was even happening. So, the HTMA was so powerful that we said, You know what, there's, there's a time and really good strong need and purpose for comprehensive blood panel and genetics. And there's, there are like lymphatic and you're talking about saliva. But, but just getting started, if we are the platform that is really stimulating the conversation in the public square and initial kind of 0-to-1 action for the every person, the person that just says, "I don't feel good. I'm not sleeping good. I know something's wrong, but I don't know where to begin." This is that beginning point. And, I cannot tell you, Ben, how many people I've interacted with that hate needles. They just don't want to go in and get their blood drawn. We have a product called a LifePrint Kit. We've systematized this. We've essentially said, You purchase this, we've made it ultra affordable. You can get it at golifemarket.com, and we're even setting up our own kind of dedicated page for this. We can drop that in the, in the show notes. You purchase this, the HDMA kit gets sent out to you, you cut some hair, it gets in within a 2-week window, you have a full custom beautiful report. And I'm not talking about a report you would typically get from you know, your doctor. This is gorgeous. Yeah, it's beautiful. It walks you through everything that you need to do. And we have a doctor on staff who actually does that consultation with you. And then from there, it gets handed off to our coaching team. And our coaching team says, great, supplements that you need, we've ordered those for you. Um, now we're going to put you on a movement and nutrition plan, and we're here to walk with you with any questions. And this is a 3-month process, so we want to make sure that in 90 days from the time that you signed up to get your Lifeprint kit to the time that you end in 90 days. We want to make sure that you are on the right track, you're feeling better. It's not placebo, it's very, very noticeable. You feel it, you see it. We're here to ensure your outcome.

Ben Greenfield: The simplicity of it is pretty cool because a lot of the fancy blood tests, which are great, I mean, I've talked before in the past about around from 10X to Cyphox. Function is a big player. And, we want to support people in getting tests like that. But, for our members, especially initially, we want to get data to you without breaking the bank. None of this is about what— and I'm not going to throw anybody under the bus here, but there's everything from programs from other experts and personalities that based on what I've seen in the market, start at about $97 a month for a membership program that has maybe 1/10 of what's in Life Market all the way up to you're going to have a concierge doctor, whatever, Peter Attia, and you're paying $75,000 a month for access to or $75,000 a year for access to the fancy tests and the extra. And, I realize that's a need for people, but You used the word democratized earlier, Caleb. $34.99 a month, $1 access for a month to try it out, and even free if you don't want the premium stuff. That's the level that we're playing at as far as giving you as much value as possible for as little as possible. We would rather touch a lot of lives than make a lot of money off of few lives if that makes sense.

Yeah, 100% and well said. I think going into this, the mission has always been how do we get 10 million, 10 million people's lives affected, changed, give them more information, give them better access in 10 years. So it wasn't about, hey, can we make this amount of money on this product? Of course we have to run a business, but that was never the initial drive, calling, mission. For us, it was about touching, changing lives. And, and I've said this before, not just your life. Someone in your family is probably hurting. Someone in your community that you're connected to is likely hurting. Life Network being completely free. Tell the world about it. This is incredible that you have finally a dedicated space that is not behind a paywall. That gives you opportunities and pathways to learn more and activate around your bio-individual health needs. That is a game changer. So, we have been relentless pen to paper finding ways to make this accessible for every human being on the planet.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. And, we have and it's live. And, Kaleb, I happen to have a hot date tonight with my wife you and your wife. And, I'm apparently getting lamb chops and a Greek salad without the pita according to the app that I'm given earlier. If you see me with the pita, just slap it away or tell my app what I did. But anyways, next steps for people, obviously, the shownotes where you can listen to the first show with Caleb are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BenCaleb2. Like the number 2. But then, for the actual URL, if people are just like, "Yo, I want in right away. I want to download this." Is it App Store? Is it a certain URL? Or, where's the best place right now, Caleb?

If you're on an iPhone, you can go to the Apple App Store, just type in Life Network, you can download the app. If you're on an Android device, you can go to the Google Play Store and just type in Life Network app. If you want to just go to our website and learn more, go to joinlife.network. Www.joinlifnetwork.com. So, www.joinlifnetwork.com, it'll give you links to download. You can even sign up right there. You literally put in your name and your email and you're in. That's it.

Sick. Joinlifnetwork.com. Caleb, go have some honey, dude. And then, I'll say—

Oh, I will.

Yeah. Alright, folks. Thanks for listening in. It's me and Caleb Applegate. Look forward to plenty more of these as we keep you up to speed on everything that we're doing to make America healthy and make the world healthy. So, thanks, Caleb.

Thanks, man.

Cheers. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship. If I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit, and I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.