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‘Sebastian’ re-writes the sex work movie

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‘Sebastian’ re-writes the sex work movie

Ruaridh Mollica in Sebastian.

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“So, tell me about yourself” are the first words you hear in the film Sebastian, delivered softly but directly by a nervous man trying to avoid monotone.

For anyone who’s ever dated or used hookup apps before, the awkward tension is recognizable enough to send a shiver of embarrassment down your spine.

“What do you want to know?” responds the voice of a much younger man, in a tone that suggests he really wants to know why the other man is interested.

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What follows, only two minutes into the film’s nearly two-hour runtime, are the intense sights and sounds of lovemaking that seems so real it will have you checking the movie’s rating. Although this sexual encounter between two men is clearly not love, it isn’t a quick anonymous hookup either. It’s a transaction.

The young man who calls himself Sebastian is a sex worker for the digital age — meeting clients online and making their dreams come true for an hour or two in real life. Sebastian’s name is actually Max, and he isn’t really after money. Rather, he’s mining his experiences for stories.

“He’s kind of desperate to get this debut novel,” said Sebastian’s writer and director Mikko Mäkelä, but Max’s desperation threatens to unravel his ambitions.

NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe spoke with Mäkelä and star Ruaridh Mollica about what the film has to say about authenticity, sex and different generations of queer men.

No big deal

Mikko Mäkelä’s own journey of self-discovery led him to Sebastian. He told NPR that when he first moved to London after finishing university, he was inspired by the matter-of-fact stories his friends told about sex work.

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“It really seemed to be becoming almost another option in London’s gig economy,” Mäkelä said. “The threshold to going into sex work seemed to really have lowered and I really wanted to craft a portrait of a character for whom sex work is a choice rather than something done out of a lack of them.”

Mäkelä said that he wasn’t interested in creating yet another sex worker drama focused on trauma — but that he didn’t want Max to be void of conflict either. In fact, the character’s dueling lives threaten to overwhelm him throughout the film.

Ruaridh Mollica said he felt the conflict brewing within his role from the very first reading.

“That’s why he decides to do it under the alias of Sebastian at the start. And I think once you decide to keep it a secret, it’s almost like [it] kind of festers and it becomes harder and harder to admit it,” Mollica said. “I don’t think Max wanted to feel judged or was in a position with himself where he felt comfortable enough, and like, self-accepting enough to be judged.”

Mäkelä said he wants the audience to question their own biases as Max does in the film.

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“I think there is definitely a lot of hypocrisy around that idea where the [publishing] industry might, you know, fetishize those stories, but … a publisher might still judge the writer who is also a sex worker,” he said.

Framing every sex worker as a victim, backed into a corner, isn’t always accurate or interesting (something Max eventually finds out in the film). Neither is a film where the sex seems unrealistic, Mäkelä said.

Sex should be real and shameless

Queer viewers — especially those who identify as male — will be struck by how true-to-life the sex scenes are in Sebastian. The movements, sounds and, er, shall we say “mechanics,” are so accurate you may question whether there’s any pretending at all.

“The sex scenes were such an integral part of the story that they had to be thought of in just the same way as [the] building blocks of character,” director Mäkelä told NPR. “I think it’s really important to continue to provide for representation of queer sex where certainly, you know, there is more and more in [the] media, but … it’s not always realistic.”

Mäkelä identifies as gay himself, and his star Ruaridh Mollica said the 35-year-old writer/director’s script was already quite thorough. Still, Mäkelä enlisted the help of intimacy coordinator Rufai Ajala.

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“It’s also important to work with a queer intimacy coordinator who would, you know, kind of understand the anatomy in [a] detailed way to make sure that those scenes did ring true to two queer audience members,” Mäkelä said. “And it was also really important to have a range of sex scenes with different clients and kind of see different body types … and ages.”

In Sebastian, Ruaridh Mollica plays an aspiring novelist who turns to sex work to gather material.

In Sebastian, Ruaridh Mollica plays an aspiring novelist who turns to sex work to gather material.

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Sebastian is actor Ruaridh Mollica’s biggest role, and having to be close-to-nude for much of the film made it a challenging one. He said having an intimacy coordinator like Ajala on-set was crucial.

“I think intimacy coordinators are so important nowadays,” Mollica told NPR. “They will just set you up with the other actor and you’ll do all these experiences and workshops of safe touches and going through each other’s bodies with each other in a very respectful way, and building boundaries and just feeling safe and comfortable. After about half an hour, you would feel so relaxed and trusting with your co-actor.”

Mollica said that, beyond the intimacy coordinators, he was just lucky to have such talented and gracious scene partners, including character actor Jonathan Hyde.

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Ageism among queer men

Mollica vividly recalls working with Hyde, who plays the one client his character meets who actually steals his heart.

“Jonathan Hyde is one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. He was just such a silly, fun guy,” Mollica told NPR. “He gave his whole heart to those scenes and really almost brought this energy into the air of like, ‘no, let’s, let’s live this and be real here.’ We all dropped our guard and just got to be a part of it. And I think those scenes are some of the most powerful because of that.”

Hyde’s character Nicholas is an older literature professor who’s recently lost his partner of 29 years. He is almost immediately vulnerable with Mollica’s much younger Sebastian, and what starts as a transactional relationship soon develops into something sweet.

“I really wanted through that encounter for Max to be surprised and the audience to be surprised as well,” Mäkelä said. “I really wanted to challenge Max in what his preconceptions about sex work had been, and and what his experiences thus far had been.”

Jonathan Hyde in Sebastian.

Jonathan Hyde in Sebastian.

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And the surprise, in part, is that Max (or Sebastian) isn’t expecting to fall in love with a man so much older than he is. Because, well, as Mäkelä put it: “I think the gay community can be and generally is quite horribly ageist.”

“I think maybe on a subconscious level, even I was wanting to kind of work against those preconceptions. Like Max says as well, outside of these meetings, there might not really be many other venues in which these characters would have anything to do with one another,” he said.

In the film, Max is steadfast in including the love story between him and Jonathan Hyde’s character in his novel, even if the publishers aren’t convinced. Because as he says in the film “they’re transmitting queer history and culture and that’s something I want to talk about.”

In the end, actor Ruaridh Mollica said he’s learned as much about acting as he has about himself from becoming Sebastian.

“I feel so much more confident in myself after that. And even my body confidence, you know, having to be practically naked on set every day and knowing that’s going to be released and it really has just been a complete self-acceptance of my sexuality,” said Mollica, who identifies as queer. “You know, it’s something that I was open about with people around me, but not something I had talked about so publicly before.”

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Sebastian is playing in select theaters now.

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Smokey Bear turns 80 this year. Did he help prevent forest fires?

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Smokey Bear turns 80 this year. Did he help prevent forest fires?

Smokey the bear cub is flown from Santa Fe, N.M., to his new home at the Washington National Zoo in a Piper J-3 Cub by New Mexico Assistant State Game Warden Homer C. Pickens in 1950. The little bear was rescued from a forest fire and named Smokey after the fire prevention symbol of the U.S. Forest Service.

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The longest-running public service announcement in the U.S. turns 80 years old today.

Its message is simple and one you’ve heard many times before: “Only you can prevent wildfires.” Smokey Bear, the beloved park ranger hat-wearing black bear who utters these famous words has undergone a complicated evolution.

And his birthday comes as fires rage in California, Colorado and other Western states. On average, some 70,000 wildfires have been documented every year in the U.S. since 1983, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

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Human-caused climate change has made these fires more intense and dangerous, but it isn’t the only factor: Federal data and various independent studies show that around 80% of all wildfires in the country are caused by humans, making Smokey’s message more relevant than ever.

So we’re taking a look back at how Smokey Bear’s mission came to be and how effective his messaging has been.

How World War II influenced Smokey Bear’s creation

 Fire burns near a Smokey the Bear fire warning sign as the Oak Fire burns through the area on July 24, 2022 near Jerseydale, California.

Fire burns near a Smokey the Bear fire warning sign as the Oak Fire burns through the area on July 24, 2022 near Jerseydale, California.

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Smokey Bear’s public service ad was created at the height of World War II in 1944. The U.S. Forest Service had been fighting forest fires for years, but the attack on Pearl Harbor brought a greater need for fire safety messaging, as firefighters were deployed overseas.

“When this campaign first launched, it was in the context of our war efforts, and the forests were seen as a resource in that context,” said Tracy Danicich, director of the Smokey Bear campaign at the Ad Council.

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A few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a Japanese submarine sitting off the coast fired shells at an oil facility in Santa Barbara County, Calif. south of the Los Padres National Forest. The attack raised fears that more attacks like this could cause wildfires in forests along the Pacific coast. The Forest Service hoped that connecting the risk of fires to the war effort would help make the case for fighting forest fires more urgent.

“There was also a rise in wildfires just from general human carelessness, lack of respect for fire, perhaps lack of knowledge of how to contain and properly respect a fire,” said Tad Bennicoff, a reference archivist at the Smithsonian Institution archives. “So the Forest Service came up with the idea of the Smokey Bear character and the message.”

But even after World War II ended, Smokey stuck around. He started showing up on posters, U.S. Postal Service stamps, in radio ads and alongside stars like Bing Crosby and Ward Bond.

You might remember calling the forest fire fighting black bear “Smokey the Bear,” but that isn’t actually his name.

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In 1952, singers Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote a jingle for and added a “the” to maintain the song’s rhythm. This inadvertently created confusion about the bear’s name, but the U.S. Forest Service maintains that Smokey’s official name is “Smokey Bear,” not “Smokey the Bear.”

The campaign’s mascot was an actual bear rescued from a wildfire

The Smokey Bear balloon floats in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on in New York on November 2021

The Smokey Bear balloon floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

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In the spring of 1950, a group of Native American firefighters rescued a bear cub who clung to a tree as a fire raged in the Capitan Mountains in New Mexico.

After its rescue, the cub became the symbol of the Smokey Bear campaign and was put on display at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

But the physical public service announcements, which for years showed a black bear in a pair of blue pants, a tan wide-brimmed park ranger’s hat and a metal shovel, confused some zoo goers.

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Bennicoff said this outfit was so closely associated with Smokey that some young kids were bewildered when they saw a naked bear at the National Zoo.

Visitors were startled to see a real bear, Bennicoff said. “They were expecting to see the Smokey Bear that they saw in print ads and on television. But lo and behold, there’s this actual bear.”

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Forest Service cartoon of Smokey Bear welcoming Little Smokey./Smithsonian Institution Archives

To help with the confusion, the zoo added a special exhibit next to Smokey’s enclosure that featured a park ranger’s uniform in Smokey’s size. During this time, Smokey Bear was receiving so much fan mail that the Zoo had to hire three assistants to keep up with the amount of letters he was getting. He even got his own ZIP code — an honor only bestowed to one other figure: the president.

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Smokey retired from the zoo at 25. In human years, he would have been roughly 70, the mandatory retirement age for federal employees at the time. In 1971, the zoo introduced “Little Smokey,” another orphan cub rescued by the Forest Service. When Smokey retired, Little Smokey took over the mantle.

The original Smokey died Nov. 9,1976, a year after his retirement. His remains were returned to New Mexico, where he was buried in the Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan, N.M., not far from where he was rescued two decades prior.

A small change for Smokey represents a big change for environmentalism

Wild mustard flowers bloom around a Smokey Bear sign in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 8, 2023.

Wild mustard flowers bloom around a Smokey Bear sign in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 8, 2023.

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For five decades, Smokey’s slogan remained the same: “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The message suggested that all fires were preventable and bad for the environment and that nature could return to its original state if fires didn’t occur.

In one ad, Smokey said that if people just took his message into their hearts, it could be like “the old times, maybe, when great herds of buffalo roamed.“

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Melinda Adams, an Indigenous fire scientist and assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science at the University of Kansas told Morning Edition that Smokey’s vision of an America without wildfires isn’t accurate.

“When you had colonizers come over and look at land, mosaics or beautiful landscapes, they developed a narrative of [these] being untouched by humans, virgin lands. They arrived and the lands were like that,” Adams said. “But we know through the recent scholarship that that’s not true. We know that Indigenous peoples created these landscapes or maintained them.”

Adams is a proponent of what she calls good fire — or burns to land that help an environment thrive. This practice is also called prescribed burning.

This is one of the reasons that in 2001, Smokey Bear changed his slogan from only you can prevent forest fires to only you can prevent wildfires. This change in messaging also represented a change in how the U.S. Forest Service approached fire treatment.

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“Now, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S Department of Agriculture are redirecting resources to good fire, beneficial fire during the off fire season in order to reduce the overgrowth that, you know, decades of fire suppression of fire deficiency has left, which makes those areas of lands more flammable,” Adams said.

The road ahead for Smokey

A Smokey the Bear forest fire prevention sign stands in front of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada mountains after recent storms increased the snowpack on February 23, 2024 near Bishop, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A Smokey the Bear forest fire prevention sign stands in front of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada mountains after recent storms increased the snowpack on February 23, 2024 near Bishop, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

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Most wildfires are still caused by human activity, which raises the question: Has Smokey’s messaging actually been effective?

John Miller, the chief of Fire and Emergency Response at the Virginia Department of Forestry, said that there is still a lot of work to be done to educate the public on fire safety.

It’s not enough, Miller said, for officials who work in fire prevention education to stand “with [their] arm around Smokey Bear shouting fire prevention on an occasional TV commercial or at a school near you or at a county fair with a booth. Somehow we need to turn that prevention into more to be more front and center to the public.”

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Miller believes that one of the big problems is that people are not aware of smaller fires that occur in areas like Virginia all the time.

“Thankfully, because of quick and efficient suppression those fire hours are suppressed quickly. They don’t become newsworthy,” Miller said. “If it hadn’t impacted a home or damaged the public just never hears about that.”

Miller thinks these smaller fires can be prevented, especially because they are often caused by humans who are not aware of simple ways they can be practicing fire safety.

Which is exactly what Smokey Bear’s evolving message is — the best way to continue to spread awareness about safe fires.

“His tips evolve, and there are other things about Smokey and the campaign that have evolved to stay relevant, but that message and focus has always remained consistent,” Danicich said.

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This digital story was edited by Obed Manuel.

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Grab a smoothie, draw some blood. Inside L.A.'s new $50,000-a-year wellness club

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Grab a smoothie, draw some blood. Inside L.A.'s new ,000-a-year wellness club

I sat in my car, in an El Segundo shopping mall parking lot, looking up at a new storefront touted as a one-stop shop for feeling physically fit, emotionally grounded and socially connected. My shoulder ached. It was my good luck that on the same day I was touring Love.Life — a new luxury health center conceived by John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market — I was also nursing a gym injury.

After weeks of navigating our infuriatingly slow medical system, it felt promising, if not surreal, to arrive at the doorstep of an establishment with nearly every treatment I could think of under one roof: diagnostic tests, rejuvenating therapies as well as fitness and nutrition plans to stave off future health problems.

I walked up to Love.Life’s entrance. Its gleaming picture windows and grass green exterior might as well have been the gates to the Emerald City, behind which mysterious healing modalities awaited. I clicked my heels together — I happened to be wearing red suede sneakers — and mumbled to myself: “There’s no place like a posh, membership-only holistic health club.” Then I headed inside, passing under block lettering that read: “Nourish Heal Thrive.”

“If this idea won’t work in L.A., it won’t work period,” says Love.Life co-founder John Mackey, who was also a co-founder of Whole Foods Market.

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The lobby was blindingly bright, with porcelain floors and mod furniture in peppy colors. There was a spacious cafe on one side and a futuristic gym on the other, animated by various blinking screens. Around the corner were what looked like red-white-and-blue space pods. What they were for, I had no idea.

“Hi there,” said a receptionist at a clinically simple desk. Was I in the lobby of a boutique hotel? A doctor’s office? Or was this an astronaut training center? Or all of the above?

The idea for this lavish temple of wellness had been swirling in the back of Mackey’s brain for almost four decades. After co-founding Whole Foods in 1980, and growing the natural and organic foods store into an international network of more than 460 outlets, Mackey and company sold the publicly traded company to Amazon in 2017 for $13.7 billion.

For his next venture, the vegan, breathwork enthusiast and pickleball lover wanted to “change the way people think about health and wellness,” he told me a few weeks earlier when I met him at the not-yet-finished Love.Life space. “This is a continuation of my own higher purpose in life.”

Mackey left Whole Foods in 2022 but had already started working on plans for the club a year earlier. (It’s part of a multipronged parent company, Love.Life, that he co-founded in 2020.)

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Over the last three years, he and his Love.Life co-founders — Whole Foods former Chief Executive Walter Robb and longtime executive Betsy Foster — transformed his dream into a reality: a swanky, holistic health center that’s part state-of-the-art gym, part high-end spa, part highly personalized doctor’s office and part exclusive social club. It touts specialists in both Eastern and Western modalities, as well as an on-site physical therapy clinic. Its “plants-forward” café serves superfood-filled dishes with names like Ocean Bowl and Green Tartine. Regular live events include meditations, soundbaths and breathwork classes. Love.Life even has three indoor pickleball courts.

If successful, Mackey envisions other centers in other cities before expanding internationally. But for now, the flagship Love.Life opens Saturday adjacent to — you guessed it — a palatial Whole Foods Market.

“If this idea won’t work in L.A., it won’t work period,” Mackey says. “People here are more into their health, they’re more into looking good, feeling good, they’re into longevity.”

Love.Life personal trainer Shelle Tarver plays on the pickleball court.

Love.Life personal trainer Shelle Tarver plays on the pickleball court.

Love.Life team members demonstrate a yoga class.

Love.Life team members demonstrate a yoga class.

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Love.Life team members Marcie Icovino, center, and Maddy Isbell demonstrate pilates equipment.

Love.Life team members Marcie Icovino, center, and Maddy Isbell demonstrate pilates equipment.

Love.Life’s mission is to help its members live longer, healthier lives by deep-diving into their health history, executing an array of specialized tests and then suggesting fitness and lifestyle changes, paired with as many preventive health measures as humanly possible.

“We’re trying to help individuals become the healthiest, best versions of themselves — physically, emotionally and spiritually,” Mackey, dressed in jeans and a Love.Life-branded polo, says. “When do most people go to a doctor? When they get sick. Our idea is: We want you to start seeing a doctor 1723376780 so that you don’t ever have to see a doctor for the chronic diseases that kill.”

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There’s a good reason most people in America don’t see a doctor until they feel ill or, say, experience shoulder pain. Our country’s healthcare is often prohibitively expensive and difficult to navigate. The “individuals” Mackey aims to help, Love.Life’s target market, are those with deep pockets who can afford to circumvent the system.

A Love.Life core membership starts at $750 a month for either a “High Performance,” “Heal” or “Longevity” membership, depending on the goal. They include five visits a year with a Love.Life primary care doctor, as well as health coaching, medical testing, fitness and recovery services and access to practitioners across 20-plus disciplines including traditional Chinese medicine, sports performance, yoga and nutrition. The membership cost tops out at the “Concierge” level, which costs $50,000 a year and includes unlimited doctors visits, 24/7 care and the most detailed level of medical testing the facility offers. There are also limited memberships, such as a medical-only or fitness and recovery-only membership for $500 a month and $300 a month, respectively.

Cold vapor billows out of a cryotherapy chamber as the author steps in.

Cold vapor billows out of a cryotherapy chamber as the author steps in.

A red light lamp offers the author collagen stimulation.

A red light lamp offers the author collagen stimulation.

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Upon enrolling, members can undergo a series of tests so facility specialists have a 360-degree view of their health. It’s a journey into the bodily unknown. They may draw blood for an advanced lab panel measuring more than 120 biomarkers, have their musculoskeletal layer assessed or undergo a DEXA body composition assessment and bone mineral density scan. Other specialty tests address the microbiome, hormone health, cardiac health and food sensitivities, among other things.

From there, Love.Life experts put together a personalized fitness, nutrition and lifestyle plan for the member, which they can follow at the facility’s gym or through various treatments. Red light therapy beds to support healing? Check. Breathwork class to manage stress? Check. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy pods to reduce inflammation? You better believe it.

Members book all appointments on an app, which also stores their health history and tracks fitness progress. They can also use it to share that information with any of Love.Life’s practitioners, reserve a pickleball court, book a massage or order lunch.

The Ocean Bowl at Love.Life is packed with fresh fruit, cacao and chia seeds.

The Ocean Bowl at Love.Life is packed with superfoods, like blue spirulina, cacao and chia seeds. Though memberships to the wellness club start at $300 a month, members of the public are welcome to visit its cafe.

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Some parts of Love.Life will be open to the public, such as the cafe, select healing therapies and the spa, for which anyone can buy a $100 day pass. But Mackey emphasizes that membership and community are key to the experience.

“If you have friends with good habits, you’re gonna pick that up,” he says.

That one-percenter healthy living also comes with its fair share of window dressing. In designing the 45,000-square-foot space, Mackey says Love.Life worked with an acoustical engineer to manage the sound flow. Passing from the airy, bustling lobby and cafe area into the spa, the halls narrow and the lights dim. A preserved moss wall absorbs ambient sound, but for a gurgling fountain and soothing music. Crystals, mirrors and chimes were ensconced in its walls per the advice of a Feng Shui expert. A warm Turkish Hammam Table allows visitors a place to stretch and lounge opposite a wall-sized fountain.

The preserved moss wall in the spa area.

The preserved moss wall at Love.Life, which absorbs ambient sounds to keep the spa quiet.

Danel Lombard and Davon Murray work on Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Vankin as she previews Love.Life.

The author undergoes a resting metabolic rate assessment, measuring energy expenditure and caloric burn at rest, attended by Danél Lombard, physical therapist, back center, and Davon Murray, exercise physiologist.

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I paid a $100 visitor fee to enter and relaxed into a plush, leather Zero Gravity Chair, with heated seats and massage nodes, my head draped backward and my feet pointed high. This was a resting metabolic rate assessment, which measures your energy expenditure and how many calories your body burns at rest (the test was part of my reporting, and is not included with a spa pass). Attendants fitted me with a snug Vo2 max mask, which was synced to a nearby laptop. Then I zoned out for about 20 minutes, nearly falling asleep.

When they returned, I learned exactly how many calories my body needs to think, breathe and otherwise stay alive (not nearly as many as I’d hoped for). Had I been a member, I might have met with a Love.Life nutritionist next, to configure my caloric and macronutrient needs to support weight loss or exercise performance.

From there, Love.Life regional president, Michael Robertson led me into a private room where I slid my lower limbs into what looked like a space suit, while lying on a table. The FDA-cleared Ballancer Pro lymphatic compression therapy, he said, enhances lymphatic drainage to rid the body of toxins and reduces swelling and muscle soreness. Robertson zipped me up and tapped a button before the suit began to swell and squeeze my legs. It was oddly relaxing.

Love.Life personal trainer, Shelle Tarver, performs squats on a high tech OxeFit machine.

Love.Life personal trainer Shelle Tarver performs squats on a high tech OxeFit machine, which gives real-time feedback on power, velocity, load and balance.

Though I skipped the gym during my visit, personal trainer Shelle Tarver was there doing squats on something called an OxeFit machine. She faced a giant, vertical screen on which her digital avatar mirrored her moves and gave her real-time data about her power, velocity load and balance so she could make her workouts more effective.

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Finally, it was time to chill out — literally. Robertson led me to what looked like a tall commercial refrigerator bathed in blue and purple light. The cryotherapy chamber was set at minus-120 degrees Fahrenheit. It was so cold that the instant I stepped inside — wearing a face mask, earmuffs and mittens for protection — ice crystals began to form on my nose and snowflakes fell from the ceiling. Cryotherapy is meant to reduce inflammation and increase circulation, Robertson said; but when I stepped out after one minute, I just felt very awake.

Preventive healthcare — spending money to stay well rather than on costly medical bills once sick — is a growing trend. Whether this proactive attitude is a response to America’s sluggish healthcare system or a quest for control at a chaotic time in history is anyone’s guess. But businesses have popped up to meet the desire.

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West Hollywood’s Remedy Place offers high-end, holistic “social wellness services,” plus chiropractic and biometric testing; Healthspan, a digital medical clinic, aims to help patients fight aging and chronic disease. Even traditional gyms like Equinox are now offering a $40,000-a-year concierge membership that includes sleep coaching, personal training, massage therapy and nutrition advice.

Love.Life combines all these services into one club — and goes one step further. Its members can use their designated doctor at the club as their primary care provider. The company doesn’t accept insurance, but they do offer a super bill which members can submit for reimbursements if the tests and treatments qualify under their plan. Membership, Mackey clarified, is not meant to replace health insurance, however, which is still necessary for emergencies, among other things.

When Whole Foods opened in 1980, it merged the utilitarian supermarket experience with a hippie-minded desire to nourish oneself from the land. As the brand grew, it became synonymous with a certain crunchy aspirational lifestyle. Whole Foods became more than a place to pick up a carton of milk, it was a place to assert your values, and to feel good. (And spend, as many people joked, your “whole paycheck.”)

Can Mackey find the same success with Love.Life? To thread the same needle in the legendarily opaque realm of healthcare seems a much further stretch. But when your target market has bottomless pockets, a fantasy can become a reality.

Janette Rizk demonstrates a blood pressure test in the medical clinic.

Janette Rizk, Love.Life’s communications director, has her blood pressure checked in the medical clinic.

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As exciting as that might be for some people, it could have negative affects on the larger population, says Paul Ginsburg, a professor of health policy at USC.

“They’re extending the scope of what medical care is for their wealthy clients,” he says of Love.Life. “If you’re wealthy, it’s a wonderful opportunity. But physician resources are stretched pretty thin today, and if the centers were to take off, engaging physicians in service to very wealthy people means drawing their time away from treating the general population — that’s the downside.”

Mackey hopes that Love.Life will follow in Whole Foods’ philanthropic path. (Whole Planet, a project of the grocery chain’s nonprofit, has invested $113 million in global communities since 2005.)

“Philanthropy comes from success,” Mackey says. “We will do things to help improve the health of poor people. But it’ll come because we’ll have the resources to do that.”

One of Love.Life's many cold plunge tubs.

One of Love.Life’s many cold plunge tubs.

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Love.Life's spacious hemlock wood sauna in the spa.

Love.Life’s spacious hemlock wood sauna in the spa.

Once my tour was over, I wistfully returned to the parking lot, a strawberry-Ashwagandha smoothie in hand. I’d enjoyed the experience more than I thought I would and longed for Love.Life’s services at my fingertips. After that whirlwind of peculiar chambers and treatments, I wondered if my ailing shoulder even felt a tad more limber.

But would I ever travel down this yellow brick road again? At Love.Life’s price points, likely never.

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