Foilboarding Mastery, Hidden Monopoly Secrets, Digital Addiction & How To Make Family Dinners Fun Again, With Exploding Kitten's Elan Lee.

Ben Greenfield Life

Ben Greenfield

Education, Fitness, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode with Elan Lee, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most creative minds in the world of game design—and walk away with some unexpected life lessons along the way. You’ll hear how Elan went from crafting movie special effects and pioneering the Xbox to co-creating Exploding Kittens, a wildly successful card game that started with nothing more than a Sharpie and a deck of poker cards on a beach in Hawaii.

Whether you’re a parent looking for better ways to connect with your kids, a creative chasing your next big idea, or just someone who loves a good origin story with a dose of humor and heart, you won't want to miss this conversation.

Full show notes: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/elanlee

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Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life podcast, we ended up in the same place at the same time, and he said, hey, I heard you have this card game and can you show it to me?
0:10.6	So we played it for 10 minutes, and we finished the game, and he's like, that was awesome, let's play again.
0:15.2	And so we played again, and 10 minutes turned into an hour, and an hour turned into four hours. And before I knew it,
0:21.0	like, this is all we were doing. For the whole weekend, this is all we did is played this game
0:25.3	over and over and over again. And the more we played, the more we would change it, the better it
0:29.4	got. And at the end of this, he looked at me and he said, listen, I have always wanted to make a game. I've never found one that's as fun as this. I would love to be a part of this.
0:40.5	And also, you really need to change the name of this game. At the time I was calling it Bomb Squad.
0:45.5	And he said, bomb squad is so obvious. Like, of course you're scared of the bomb. Bombs are scary. It's so
0:51.3	on the nose that nobody even cares. Instead of being scared of a
0:55.0	bomb, what if you were scared of a cute, adorable, fuzzy little kitten, and we call the game
0:59.0	exploding kittens instead? And I started a card game with a friend of mine. We put it up on
1:04.2	Kickstarter, trying to raise $10,000 and raised about $9 million instead. Welcome to the boundless
1:10.2	life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield.
1:13.3	I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist,
1:16.7	and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health,
1:21.2	fitness, longevity, and beyond.
1:40.3	I've been talking many times over the past few months about this incredible lamp that I lay under in the lounge of my home to go into a deep trance-like state.
1:47.2	Expand my mind, develop neuro pathways, trigger neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, downregulate my default mode network, all the things a lot of people are traveling for freaking Peru to do
1:51.8	ayahuasca for popping massive amounts of psilocybin for. I don't mess around all that stuff.
1:57.0	I get full light sound therapy drug free with with this lamp, and it's incredible.
2:02.3	And then once you're done, you just get back to work, play, family, whatever you want.
2:07.0	They've got custom audio tracks.
	...

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