"The Fart Of War": A New, Hilarious, Skill-Building, Family-Bonding Card Game Designed by Ben Greenfield & Sons (Now Available!).

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, each player has a bunch of cards in their hand that are actual farts, like the princess fart, the nuclear fart, the celiac disease fart, which we later ditched the idea of so as not to offend anyone with celiac disease. Gluten fart, the whey protein fart, the gym fart, the yoga fart. And each of these farts is in different players hands that are dealt out to them. And then players can make their fart stronger, weaker, like with a modifier card. Like, if you get the really weak princess fart, you could modify it and make it more powerful with more points by equipping the princess with an Indian food modifier or hot sauce, broccoli casserole, or a match. And you could also make other players farts weaker by playing on their fart, like potpourri or peppermint oil, if they have some super strong fart, like an old man fart. Yeah.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Well, welcome to a very special, very special and stinky podcast episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Show. This is a special episode because it's probably coming out on a day you're not accustomed to me releasing a podcast maybe a little bit shorter than the podcast that you are accustomed to hearing from me. Because basically my guests on today's podcast really don't have much to say at all. They're pretty empty heads, kind of quiet.

Yeah.

Introducing my sons, River.

Hello.

Say hello. And Taran.

Hello.

Taryn's voice is a little deeper.

It is a little deeper.

What'd you do, smear some testosterone cream on your neck or something when you were 12?

You never know what's in the pan.

Give yourself a month ahead.

You never know.

Took a little extra liver. Yeah. So my. How old are you guys now?

We're 15.

15. Both of you are 15?

Two months now.

Is it true that you just got your driver's license, Terence?

No driver's permit, but close permit.

Well, we're going to go out to dinner tonight, actually, to celebrate what we're about to tell you in today's podcast. And Taryn's gonna drive.

I am here. Well, hopefully he's going to drive. Hopefully it ends well.

Big truck all the way downtown. So if you never hear from us again, that's what happened.

I'll be writing my will in the car.

That's right. So weird having a.

So we're good.

Well, it's funny because if you're watching the video version of this episode, we're in our kitchen right now and there's a stack of games. Fuzzy logic, idiomatic. Road trip, Bears versus babies. All these games piled up in front of us. Even Poopocalypse, which is a fun one. Not necessarily to have these games as big visual segments, but more, they're just, like, propping up computers and stuff. Yeah. But, yeah, this podcast wouldn't happen without Poopocalypse, but we have a huge game closet, and this is relevant to what you're going to learn in this episode. We have a huge game closet. I would say at least 100 games and counting.

50 or more. I wouldn't say.

If you count little card games. That's probably. Yeah, a lot. We have been collecting games, like little game addicts, probably since you guys were maybe like five or six.

Probably.

Yeah. Like, the way that things go down in our home, and I think I've talked about this on podcasts before, is we are all over the map during the day. Like, we have a family meditation in the morning where we all gather. It's a fun one, guys, right?

It is fun.

The family huddle. And then after we do Bible reading and prayer and hang out and meditate for a little bit. In the family huddle, we all kind of, like, make plans about what's going on for dinner and who's got to be where during the day. And then we all have a big hug and we go off and do our thing.

That's right.

And we're, like, together, but not together. Like, we're seeing each other all day long and hanging out, and sometimes we're throwing in little workouts and breath work here and there.

But lunch.

Exactly. But the party starts about what time?

About 7:37.

6:37. Party starts. And by party, what I mean is we all gather in the kitchen at that point. We've all kind of, like, prepared our contribution to the evening meal, which, let's name off some of our favorites.

Steak.

Steak. Carrot.

Carrot fries.

Carrot fries. Cucumber salad. Mom. Sourdough bread. I usually do the meat.

Yep. You do the meat.

Yep. Steak. Fish.

I like Asian salad.

That's usually Asian salad. We use the air fryer a lot. Fried pickles. Little preview of what's to come. Fried pickles. We make salad. And so everybody just, like, brings together all this amazing food, like a family potluck that we've all made. And then we have a song, usually river and Tara and I go through a book together.

Yep, that's true. Discuss the chapters.

Yeah, we, like, use the time before dinner as discussion time. So we're always holding each other accountable by reading one book together, typically at the cadence of a chapter a day. Like, sometimes it's spiritual life, sometimes it's self development, sometimes it's like becoming a better writer. It really varies. We did, like, Rick Rubin's Creative act last month, and then we did one called Pascal's Wager. Which is Pascal's Wager. Yeah. Which is like an apologetics book. Right now we're doing one by Doug Wilson called Mere Christendom. So more than just Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. For sure. So we go through these books, which I've been doing with river and Taryn since they were knee high to a grasshopper, so to speak.

Wait. Oh, discussing books.

Yeah. Yeah. And so we come together at dinner. We discuss a book when mom sits there and drinks her wine. And then, because mom doesn't like to read, and then we basically all sing a song together, say a prayer, and then the party begins because we bust out a game and we play games probably six nights of the week. Yeah. And so we eat. All of our games have, like, grease. Mostly my fault, because I eat with my hands. I find I have a more intimate relationship with my food when I eat with my hands. So there's lots of chicken grease and old bits of carrot fries and salt and oil and stains and Primal kitchen ketchup.

Someone else comes up like, what's this?

You could probably feed an army with our game closet, just with the food particles that are left on the games. But basically, we play a game all during dinner, and sometimes we talk in between plays. And so there's some talking. It's not like we don't get to know each other. But a big focus, even when we have dinner guests over is the games get broken out. What are some of our favorites?

Oh, chameleon.

Chameleon. Good one. Exploding Kittens. Exploding kittens, yeah. Any of the ones by the oatmeal.com are super fun. We like some adventure, like, longer games like Ticket to Ride, Everdell. Everdell is amazing. If you guys want to get Everdell Quiddler, we should tell people about our modified rules for Quiddler. We'll get to that because that plays a part in what we're about to tell you. Also, and similar to Quiddler 5 Crown, we sometimes play card games. Canasta, Canadian fruit salad.

Fruit salad.

Barely anybody knows about Yummy, yummy. But it's fun. Rich Christensen, former PODCAST guest T us that one Hearts. So anyways, you get the idea. Sometimes it's like on a Sunday night, we'll pick out the longer games like Everdell or Catan or Ticket to Ride. Sometimes on the weekday nights, it's something shorter, like a card game. And we really like it because it helps to teach not just river and Terran as children, but mom and I and the adults who play with us. Everything from logic to rhetoric to game theory to math to reasoning to argumentation to conflict resolution to creativity, especially to drawing. Like some of our drawing games, which are way upgraded from Pictionary, Like, Monstrosity is really fun. Telestrations, which is like the telephone game, but with drawing. Anyways. So so many life skills can be learned through the process of gaming and learned in a really sneaky way. Like when, you know, my mom used to sneak vegetables into our spaghetti sauce to get us to eat vegetables, because we didn't like vegetables very much.

Cilantro.

It's a way of teaching through fun already. Yeah, exactly. Or like how I sneak organifi greens in with my wild plant pesto.

You put the red juice with your brisket.

No, sir, I was not getting a sponsor right there.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I'm a podcasting veteran, you guys. So anyways, go to organifi.

What?

So anyways, we got to the point where for many of our games, we started making up house rules. Like, good example would be Quitter, a word spelling game. It's like Scrabble with cards. We just bought an extra deck, harvested the cards from the extra deck we bought, put all of our special family rules. Like, if you draw this card, you can spell a card and you can spell a letter or word in any language you want.

If you use any letters in your first name, you get, like, double the points.

Double the points.

Discard your entire hand.

You can discard your entire hand if you draw this card. So we have for a long time made up little rules where we'll modify games and make them more fun or more interesting or more advanced with our family rule modifications. So we've for a long time kind of been thinking outside the box. See what I did there with games? So anyways, here's. This is gonna feel like a total disconnect to you guys if you're listening, but here's what happened. So I'm part of this entrepreneurial mastermind group. It's really fantastic. Called Mastermind Talk, put on by my friend Jason Gaynor. Who wrote a really good book called Mastermind Dinners about how to throw dinners for local entrepreneurs in your local community to bring people together. But every year, basically what Jason does is he finds an amazing, fantastic, like Five Star Resort and has all these entrepreneurs. There's like 100 plus of us, usually with our families or our spouses or.

Both, at some really fun hotel.

Yeah. Come and hang out this fun hotel for like talks and, and fancy dinners and surprise events and getaways and it's amazing. And so this year you're listening to this in May of 2023. If you're listening to it when it comes out this year, Jason found this place called Andaz Resort in Costa Rica. And I've been to Costa Rica once. You guys never been.

That's not true.

We did go. Yeah, so you've been kind of. We'll get to that. So anyway, so we decided. Yeah. Oh, hell yes. On Costa Rica for us inland Washingtonians in the middle of the winter, Costa Rica all in. So we've got like our resort reserved and we've got stuff like surfing lessons planned. And we were planning on maybe doing a little spear fishing. This amazing, like, adventure all put together. So we get on the plane and we fly to Costa Rica. And it was a beautiful trip.

It was like sunset. Oh, my God, everything was green.

Oh, Flying in over the island, it was beautiful. And mom and I had just gotten back from Mexico like two weeks prior, but either way, we were like, yes, we're not going to miss out on Costa Rica. So we fly in and it's beautiful. And the flight, like the whole trip was super smooth.

Oh, yeah.

It was like, pinch me now. I'm dreaming. Nothing went wrong. All the bags checked perfectly. You know, with international travel, it can be iffy. Sometimes goes wrong. But we were just like, oh, my gosh. And our flight was like 10 minutes early. So anyways, we get to customs or go through customs, scan River's passport. Okay. Scan Terrence passport. Yeah, yeah. And then scan Jess passport. Then we scan my passport. And they look at me and they're like, this passport is no good. And I'm like, oh, no, no. Like this. I just got back from Mexico. Like, I was just using this passport like two weeks ago. It's fine. It's actually a relatively new passport. And like, no, this passport was reported lost or stolen. And I can feel my heart rate kind of going up just a little bit because I'm like, danger zone, Danger zone. And in the back of my head I can start to hear this Little.

You guys probably saw my face turning red a little bit. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You see, like, we just spent the entire day flying here from the US we're here to go see a bunch of friends in Costa Rica. And this passport works fine. See, now, this was on a Sunday, so there's nobody working at, like, the embassy. There's very little staff at the airport. Yeah. And they inform us that the policy at the Costa Rica. Rica airport if your passport doesn't fly in terms of getting into the country is their rule is they have to send you packing on the first plane back to the U.S. that's right.

Whatever.

Wherever it is. And so we're like, oh, and.

River and Taryn and Jessa could have gone to Costa Rica.

We could have, but.

But we didn't want to split up as a family.

Yeah.

And we. We're like. We're big into, like, staying together as a family and just, like, staying solid with all each other and supporting each other no matter what. So security comes in. We've got, like, three security escorts, and they weave us through. After nearly an hour of deliberation at customs, we realized this isn't going to happen. And I'm already calling and texting all my friends who are already in the country, and they're making calls to the embassy, which, of course, isn't answering because it's Sunday night, and they're calling all their, like, bigwigs in Costa Rican government because, like, I'm in full humility. Like, some of my friends who are at this event, like, they're power players. Like, they know people, and then they're like, you know, they're not going to call the president of the U.S. but that type of thing. Like, there's. They're calling, like, politicians back in the US and long story short is my phone's blown up, but there's no way we're getting in the country.

Yeah.

And the next flight back is, like, to Newark, New Jersey.

Not to mention that. But the flights are all delayed.

Yeah.

We do it, like, seven hours.

So we sat in the airport for seven hours with police following every time we go to the bathroom. Police had to go watch me pee, and they had to escort us everywhere we would go, like to buy a coffee. And the cops had to come along with us. They did give us, like, a $10 voucher.

Tired than we were.

Oh, the cops were fading. It was turned into a game. So it was turned into a game for me, like, because I started, like, walking and pacing back and forth in the airport. So I was just trying to wear out the cops. So anyway, so we gotta fly back to New Jersey. It takes us 24 hours to get home. We're like sleeping in airports. We're exhausted. We finally get home and we look at our calendar and we're like, oh.

We got a week.

We have nothing to do for the next week because we canceled everything to go to Costa Ric. So we're thinking, let's make this fun. Let's do a staycation and we can maybe have some river and Taren's friends over for sleepovers. And mom and I could go on a date and we could just like maybe do a little, little early spring cleaning. Super fun. And so we just start to make lemon out of lemon out of lemonade. That's backwards. Lemonade out of lemons. Sweet tea out of lemons. And so one night, river and Taryn and I decided we're going to father son date because we like to do dates. Sometimes we'll do one on one dates where mom will take one of the sons to one restaurant, I'll take a son to another restaurant, and then we come together after for dessert.

Sometimes me and dad sneak up on.

Mom and we'll sneak up on each other if one of us finishes early and, and, and hijack the other team's dinner. Sometimes we'll do dinner at the same restaurant, but reserve tables on separate ends of the restaurant and be together, but not together because there's different conversations that happen when you're one on one with your dad or with your child, with your mom than with your by yourself. So we decided we're going to go to this little tapas joint in Spokane called De Espana, New Spanish restaurant we want to check out. So we go out to dinner, river and Taren and I do. And as we're going through dinner, we start to come up with the idea for what we think would be a really funny card game. We often make up words at our house. Like if something is amazing and cool, we'll call it like a video podcast. A vodcast amazul. I think vodcast is already a word. I think. I don't know. Or dictionary. Or a video. I think it's called a vlog. Video blog. A vlog. Or chicken and waffles. Chaffles. That's what we have for breakfast this morning. Like we just make up words and we do a lot of word platter house. And for some reason we had been talking about a book that river and Taryn I Believe you guys have gone through this book, Sun Zoo's book. So they were right in the middle of reading Sun Tzu's book for one of their schooling programs, programs called Art of War.

Well, the art of War.

The Art of War. And we thought, you know what's funny is fart of war. Fart of war. Isn't that fun? And so we're like, yeah. And wouldn't it be funny if there was like a game where each player has a bunch of cards in their hand that are actual farts, like the princess fart, the nuclear fart, the celiac disease fart, which we later ditched the idea of so as not to offend anyone with celiac disease. Gluten fart, the whey protein fart, the, the gym fart, the yoga fart. And each of these farts is in different players hands that are dealt out to them. And then players can make their fart stronger, weaker, like with a modifier card. Like if you get the really weak princess fart, you could modify it and make it more powerful with more points by equipping the princess with an Indian food modifier. Or hot sauce. Or hot sauce. Broccoli casserole match. Or a match. And you could also make other farts weaker by playing on their fart, like potpourri or peppermint oil if they have some super strong fart, like an old man fart. And so then we thought we could also have special action cards. Like what if you could like a blame it on the dog card when you lay your fart card where people don't know how much power your fart actually has.

Gas mask.

Or a gas mask card that lets you deflect another player's attack.

My favorite is cheek lift.

The cheek lift. Sorry about the dog. They get excited when we start talking about farting. Yeah, we even have the dog fart. The dog fart card, the blame it on the dog card. Those are two good cards in this game. And so we hatched the idea for this game that very night at dinner. That's the background of how we came up with the idea for a new game. And we thought, well, that's interesting and maybe we should just make this game on some index cards and start playing it at home. So we started making these index cards and began to design this game on blank white index cards. As a matter of fact, that very week we went to a coffee shop for like three hours.

People's waffles.

People's waffles. And the coffee shop next door by the Way if you're ever in Spokane, People's waffles farm to table waffles.

We're going to tonight. And we had waffles this morning.

And we do waffles and de Espana today in celebration. In celebration of this podcast comes full circle. So anyways, what we did was we designed this whole game and we started to play it and it's hilarious and it's fun and we're like laughing the whole time and there's so many fart jokes happening during the game. And you got like your cloud and your barracks and there's attacks and there's farts and there's smelliness and there's stinkiness and, oh, it's just, it's incredible. And so mom and me and river and Taren are playing this thing. And one night as I was preparing, I was actually preparing a special recipe for this cookbook I'm launching in a few months, the sequel to Boundless Cookbook. See, I did there. I did a change, another plug and a recipe in that cookbook. Speaking of air fryers is for air fried pickles, which turned out to be amazing that night. It was you literally like you thin slice pickles or you thin slice. We just make our own pickles. So we had like big old cucumbers that had been fermenting, but you could use regular pickles, like bubbies or whatever. We thin slice them, you dry them. That's key to getting the crispiness. You dredge them in egg and coconut flour, sprinkle them with a little bit of olive oil, and then air fry them.

Did we use tartary buckwheat or coconut?

I think we used, we've used a couple. We used Himalayan tartary buckwheat for one. I think we used coconut flour for another. But anyways, you guys get the idea. So we're sitting there eating fried pickles. I forget what we had the fried pickles, I think it was like chicken, actually. And I said, you know what, guys, we need to launch this game and call it our new gaming company, Fried Pickles Games. With our very first game being Fart of War. And we as a father son business have officially launched a brand new game company called Fried Pickles Games, with our newest first game being Fart of War. Now, we have been working. If you guys have been watching me on Instagram or these guys on Go Greenfield show on Instagram, you may have noticed a lot of little behind the scenes videos of US3 up to a lot of business design, car design drawings, illustration talk with manufacturing manufacturers hiring COOs and assistants to help us with all of the different marketing and manufacturing aspects. The Kickstarter campaign, everything that we're in the process of dialing in, much of which is going to be live by the time you listen to this episode, which is super cool. We've got our first official pest game going to manufacturing in two weeks to get the actual version sent to our house, which is amazing. We have been working tirelessly behind the scenes. I've been teaching river and Terran feeding through the fire hose, everything I know about Slack channels for games and hiring a COO and negotiating pricing. And we've got this great guy, Tomer, shout out to Tomer Hen. He's our operations manager, and him and his team are helping us a ton with all the different moving aspects of launching a card game. And this thing is actually coming to life. So much so not in fact, that not only at the time you're listening to this is fartofwar.com live, but fried pickles Games. We've already mapped out our next two games that we're going to be designing. Is it five now? Yeah, we've like, well, I'm losing track. There's at least two that I know are for sure going to happen. So basically we thought, well, the only way to actually launch a successful card game is you have to drive a lot of traffic to the Kickstarter campaign and to the website, close to the game, close to the time the game comes out. So we thought, well, we have podcast listeners, river and Taryn do for their cooking podcast@go greenfields.com and then@bengreenfieldlife.com I thought, well, gosh, I should tell all my listeners about this because A, I think playing games together as a couple or as a family or at a family reunion or with a bunch of friends is so fun. And B, I'll bet a lot of people who listen to my show would be interested in checking out this new game. And we've got a ton of perks. We're doing like bathroom spray, Fart of War branded bathroom spray. We're doing boxers and brief with your favorite fart character on the butt of the boxer and brief special branded whoopee cushions. So when you go check out the Kickstarter and the launch of this new game, there's all sorts of cool insider perks that you get. Because if you're listening to this podcast, you're one of the first people to know about the launch of this new game. So it's called Fart of War, Fart of War. And you can check it all out. It's actually ready. And if you go to fartofwar.com, and you sign up for the email list over there, we're also going to be looking for test players and test families for this game. Yes. So if you want to get your hands on a test version and you're on the email list, there'll be an email coming out about how you can get a free copy of the game sent to your house to test. And it's a couple of card decks. It's super simple. This game is going to be super easy to learn. It's hilarious. We worked a lot of funniness into this game. The player who's the stinkiest player goes first and from then on out, the fart jokes and the fart puns ensue. So it's, it's just, it's been incredible and it's also been a fun father son journey.

It has.

I love you guys. I love you. Love, love making fart jokes to you guys. So anyways, we've got the whole game design. It's@fartofwar.com and we think it's a pretty good game if we don't say so ourselves.

Yes.

So here's how you can help. That's right. And plenty more games to. With the Fried Pickles gaming company, we might be full of hot air, but out of both ends.

So we need your help. We need your help because we have never launched a gaming company before. Never launched a game before. This is our first game and we want to make this thing go viral. So if you have friends who like games, if you guys like games, if your parents like games, if you have like a team retreat or a corporate retreat where you guys are going to be playing games, if you go tofartofwar.com, then you can sign up on the email list. I don't know if the game is going to be available for purchase when you listen to this podcast, but it's available for pre release. So if you go there, you can get in the Kickstarter for special perks. This game is going to be on Amazon, on the website, on Kickstarter, anywhere. Fine, fine. Games are found. And just so you guys know, like we go to the movie theater like maybe once every six months or so, tops. But we go buy a new game at least once a month. We're going to buy a new game tonight. Actually, it's the best 20 to 25 dollars that we spend every month. Because we get hours upon hours of fun for like a quarter of the cost of taking the family to a movie theater and for two hours. I'm not a popcorn guy. I usually sneak my own food in like a dark chocolate bar.

I'm a popcorn guy. Stuff in my own popcorn. And it was garlicky filled the theater.

Yeah, yeah, it was no secret that you snuck your own popcorn in. But anyways, it's game. Buying games is such a great investment, something we've been doing for a long time. I don't want to sound like a used car salesman now, but you should definitely get this game and we need your support because we want this game to go big time and put a smile on a lot of people's faces and bring a lot of families together over the dinner table laughing, getting greasy ketchup and mustard stains on their fart cards, which is even more gross when it's a fart card. Yeah, it's probably good on brand for the fart card, especially if you have leaky gut syndrome to have food particles on your fart. Any of you knows about gut science understands the carrot slices and corn in the crap metaphor. So anyways, river and Terran, did we miss anything?

I don't think so.

Okay, well, you guys, we're so happy if you stuck it out for this special podcast episode. Again, the whole game is@fartofwar.com check it out, support the show, and if you want the show notes for this episode, you can go to BenGreenfieldLife.com FartOfWar BenGreenfieldLife.com FARTOfWar Ch check it out.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed, and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. If you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.